“PUTTING THINGS BACK. JEWISH BRESLAUERS AND THEIR OBJECTS”
OP ENHEIM, Wrocław, Poland
29/05 – 22/09/2024
Packed things, only the most necessary or all belongings – everyday items, furniture, books, family souvenirs, works of art and non-obvious trinkets – left with the Haddas, Freunds, Herzs, Tischlers, Zadiks, Falks, Sklarzs, Peritzs and many other families from pre-war Breslau during the Nazi persecution. Like their owners, they were never to return.
We invite you to the opening of the exhibition “Putting Things Back. Jewish Breslauers and their Objects” on May 29, 2024 at the OP ENHEIM Cultural Center in Wrocław. This is the first initiative of this type in Poland based on private collections of Jewish families from Breslau and has been created in cooperation with those very families. What can we learn about family life, community life and city life at that time? What was Jewish urban life like – private, religious, cultural and professional?
The exhibition will answer these and other questions by presenting almost a hundred objects, photographs and documents lent to us mainly by twelve former Breslauer families, friends of the Urban Memory Foundation, currently living in Belgium, the Netherlands, Israel, Germany, Sweden, Great Britain and the United States. The strength and cultural value of the presented objects lies in their connection with individual, personal stories, embedded in the history and topography of the city. The exhibition will cover the period from the 18th century to the present day and will be available in Polish, English and German.
The exhibition will be accompanied by an artistic project and a program of events including meetings with the descendants of some of those Breslau Jewish families. The artistic project by visual artist Anna Schapiro will appear both in the tenement house itself, the former home of Jewish family Oppenheim, where the OP ENHEIM is currently located, and in the city space.
The exhibition will be open until September 22, 2024.
Free entrance.
Curators of the exhibition: Dr. Małgorzata Stolarska-Fronia and Dr. Maciej Gugała
Key consultants and experts: Dr. Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek, prof. Marcin Wodziński, Dr. Aleksandra Janus, Dr. Juliet D. Golden, Dr. Tamar Cohn Gazit, Stephen Falk, Donald Falk, and Daniel Ljunggren.
Exhibition producer: Łukasz Adamski
Project management: Agnieszka Jabłońska (UMF) with the support of Karolina Jara (OP ENHEIM & German-Polish Foundation for the Protection of Cultural Monuments) and Tomasz Woydyłło (UMF)
Exhibition designers: Musk Kolektyw
Translations from Polish to English: Dr. Juliet D. Golden and Anna Nowogońska
Editor of the exhibition texts in English: Dr. Juliet D. Golden
Corrections of texts in Polish: Anna Nowogońska
PR & Promotion: MH+, OP ENHEIM
Accompanying Program: Akcelerator Obywatelski Spark Foundation
Supporting researchers: Dr. Wojciech Tworek, Dr. Monika Piechota, Dr. Danuta Płókarz
Transcriptions of old German texts: Celine Skrippek
Objects conservation: Anna Szlasa-Byczek, Mateusz Jasiński
Technical support with documentation: Museum of Architecture in Wrocław
We invite you to come visit!
More information coming soon.
Partners and funding
The Urban Memory Foundation and OP ENHEIM Foundation are co-organizers of the exhibition. Project partners are the German-Polish Foundation for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, Viktor Oppenheim Haus, WOMAK Holding SA, the Museum of Architecture in Wrocław, Taube Department of Jewish Studies of the University of Wrocław, Akcelerator Obywatelski Spark Foundation, the City Museum of Wrocław and MultiMemo project partners: FestivALT, Zapomniane Foundation, JCC Warsaw, Formy Wspólne Foundation, the Foundation for the Documentation of Jewish Cemeteries, CEJI – A Jewish Contribution to an Inclusive Europe, the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg and the Hochschule für Jüdische Studien Heidelberg.
