Conferences Riga Ghetto Museum
The Second International Conference “Holocaust Museums and Memorial Places in Post-communist Countries: Challenges and Opportunities”

The Second International Conference “Holocaust Museums and Memorial Places in Post-communist Countries: Challenges and Opportunities” will take place on May 27-28, 2013 in Riga, Latvian Academy of Sciences (the 3rd floor). The conference will emphasize importance of the Holocaust remembrance in small European countries with overlapping memories. It will also focus on hidden resources for Holocaust remembrance and research in these countries, on the peculiarities of the Holocaust education and unknown pages of Resistance movement and heroism in ghettos and concentration camps. Session on informal Jewish education as a part of museums’ activities is also included to the program.

The Guest of honour – former inhabitant of Riga, rabbi Dr. Joseph Mendelevich (Jerusalem, Israel), well-known Jewish refusenik, he was one of the participants of the hijacking affair called „Wedding” trying to escape from USSR by plane.

This year more than 10 ambassadors will join in session which will be dedicated to the Holocaust memorialization questions and problems in countries they are representing. In other session dedicated to the education ascepts of the Holocaust history we will discuss about teaching experiences in different countries. During the film session the latest local and foreign movie projects will be presented. All participants will have a chance to visit the Riga Ghetto and Latvian Holocaust museum, where active development of expositions is going on. This year more than 40 reports will presented during two days of the conference. See the programm of the conference below.

The conference is supported by Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia, Riga City Council’s Education, Culture and Sports Department, L.A. Pincus Fund, Dutch Jewish Humanitarian Fund, EACEA (Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency).

More information and registration: project@shamir.lv, +371-67791784.

Everyone is welcomed!
Conference program:

27.05.2013

 

9:00 – 10:00 Registration (the Hall on the 3rd floor)
10:00 – 10:30 Opening of the conference:

Rabbi Dr. paed. Menachem Barkahan (Riga, Latvia) Rabbi Dr. Josef Mendelevich (Jerusalem, Israel) Māris Gailis (Riga, Latvia) – Žanis Lipke Memorial

10:30 – 12:00 Session 1: Session of ambassadors, moderators: Edward Jacobs (New York, USA) and Aldis Alliks (Riga, Latvia)
12:00 – 12:20 Coffee break
12:20 – 14:00 Session 2 (part I): Memorialization of the Holocaust

1)      Dovid Katz (Vilnius, Lithuania) – State-Sponsored Collective Memory Revisionism: A 21st Century Incarnation of Holocaust Denial?

2)      Aivars Borovkovs (Riga, Latvia) – International memorial project „Nekropole.info”

3)      Edward Jacobs (New York, USA) – The Berenbaum Group; Designing the New Jewish Memorial Museum in Skopje

4)      Aldis Alliks (Riga, Latvia) – Memorialization of the Holocaust and the Latvian Law

5)      Miklós Horváth (Budapest, Hungary) – “Who saves one life saves the whole world” (Talmud)

14:00 – 15:00 Lunch break
15:00 – 16:30 Session 2 (part II): Memorialization of the Holocaust

1)      Anna Ziębinska-Witek (Lublin, Poland) – Victims of the Holocaust in Museum Exhibitions: New Ways of Representation

2)      Savinova Alyona (Kiev, Ukraine) – Holocaust in the Internet-space of Ukraine: modern technologies and new methods of interaction with the audience

3)      Lisa Ghali (Washington, USA) – Restoring Family Links, American Red Cross

4)      Joanna Zetar (Lublin, Poland) – “The Memory of the Place” – pre-war Jewish Life and Holocaust  in Lublin commemorated in educational, artistic and documentary activities of Ośrodek “Brama Grodzka – Teatr NN”

5)      Daniil Tunin (Moscow, Russia) -Rescue of the Jews in the territory of occupied Belarus (1941-1944)

Session 3 (parallel, part I), the Hall on the 2nd floor: Education and the history of the Holocaust

1)      Sergei Shoshin (Saratov, Russia) – Educational Problems of Historical Memory about Holocaust’s Facts in the Conditions of Modern Russia

2)      Igor Shchupak (Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine) – Ukrainian Righteous Amongst the Nations: the problems of the studying and memory preserving phenomenon

3)      Oleksiy Chebotaryov (Kharkiv, Ukraine) – Holocaust in historical higher education in Ukraine

4)      Olga Savchuk (Kiev, Ukraine) – Ukrainian Experience of Tolerance Informal Education

5)      Dmitry Alekseev (Moscow, Russia) -Contemporary projects on Holocaust topic: the experience of comprehension

16:30 – 16:45 Break  
16:45 – 18:00 Session 4: Session of films

1)      Danute Selcinskaja, Lilija Kopacz (Vilnius, Lithuania) – The Documentary “The Pit of Life and Torment”

2)      Antra Gaile (Riga, Latvia) – Documentary “Ghetto Stories. Rīga”

3)      Gregory Reikhman (Ashdod, Israel) – The Project “In the line of fire. The experience of a collective portrait of a Warrior-Jew during World War II”

Session 3 (parallel, part II), the Hall on the 2nd floor: Education and the history of the Holocaust

1)      Tatiana Pasman (Pskov, Russia) -Field work and networking with students who study history of the Holocaust in terms of children’scomprehensive local historyexpedition

2)      Neonila Tzuganok (Asipovichy, Belarus) – Participation in the regional educational departaments to develop researching work about the Holocaust amongst pupils

3)      Josif Rochko (Riga, Latvia) – About a book M. Kantor  “Was this a dream?”

4)      Milan Chersonskij (Vilnius, Lithuania) – Rehabilitation of the past – a tool of modern politics

18:00 – 19:00 Dinner break
19:00 – 20:00 Guided tour “Riga Ghetto Museum”

 

28.05.2013

 

9:00 – 11:00 Session 5, the Hall on the 3rd floor: Resistance movement; Righteous Amongst the Nations; Jews of the Reich and Protectorate deported to Eastern Europe for extermination

1)      Elena Makarova (Haifa, Israel) – Jews of the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia deported to Riga in World War II

2)      Alexandra Tcherkasski (Dortmund, Germany) – Memorialization of deportation and extermination places in Latvia during World War II and after the War

3)      Aron Shneyer (Jerusalem, Israel) – Memorialization and its features. Common and individual

4)      Batia Valdman (Beer-Sheva, Israel) – Illegal Aliyah of Holocaust survivors to Eretz Yisrael

5)      Irina Voronovich (Minsk, Belarus) – The Occupied Territory of Belarus: Jewish Resistance and Judenrats

6)      Leonid Terushkin, Vadim Brodskij (Moscow, Russia) – Searching, researching and publishing of the letters, diaries and memories of the Holocaust period and World War II. Presentation of new books

11:00 – 11:20 Coffee break
11:20 – 13:20 Session 6 (part I): Collective memory about the Holocaust, tolerance and xenophobia

1)      Elizaveta Iakimova (Nizhni Novgorod, Russia) – Comparative analysis of advertising campaigns mentioning the theme of the Holocaust in Israel and the Baltic States

2)      Yuri Radchenko (Kharkiv, Ukraine) – Ukrainian Police in Ukrainian and Jewish Memory

3)      Irina Rebrova (Krasnodar, Russia) – Different Lives and One History. Social Memory about the Holocaust in the North Caucasus

4)      Natalia Burlakova, Ekaterina Oleshkevich (Moscow, Russia) – Socio-cultural and Psychological Mechanisms of Transgression of Holocaust Experience to Second Generation in Eastern Europe

5)      Ronaldas Račinskas (Vilnius, Lithuania) – Collective memory about the Holocaust: Reasons, Challenges and Perspectives

6)      Māris Ruks (Riga, Latvia) – Silenced truths: Anti-Semitism and its genesis in student fraternities in Latvia

13:20 – 14:20 Lunch break
14:20 – 16:40

 

Session 6 (part II): Collective memory about the Holocaust, tolerance and xenophobia

1)      Kobelyan Khachatur (Yerevan, Armenia) – Two approaches of preserving and dissemination of the Genocide memory

2)      Jekaterina Ivanova (Riga, Latvia) – Holocaust restitution: a big challenge for post-communist Europe

3)      Anna Susak (Lviv, Ukraine) – Lieux d’oubli: collective memory of the Holocaust in post-communist Lviv

4)      Vincenza Maugeri (Bologna, Italy) – Righteous Amongst the Nations in Emilia Romagna Region. An exhibition

5)      Natalia Lorens, Viktor Shapiro (Kaliningrad, Russia) – Holocaust memorials in Kaliningrad and Palmniken

6)      Mark Bernshtein (Minsk, Belarus) – Wikipedia and Holocaust

7)      Natalia Anisina (Moscow, Russia) – Russian Jewish Congress, Museum of Jewish Heritage and Holocaust