#MyParallelTraces

Share your digital postcards of Jewish Heritage!

Are there Jewish Heritage sites close to your heart and memory? What are they? And what do they mean to you? With our new #MyParallelTraces campaign, launched in cooperation with Jewish Heritage Europe, we ask you to send us a virtual post card and let us know.

Travel may be difficult now; museums, exhibitions, and heritage sites are closed. But that doesn’t mean we can’t continue to rediscover and explore Jewish heritage throughout Europe – and #MyParallelTraces is an exciting, interactive platform to help do this. Even though we can’t physically visit the places we hold dear, we can still engage with them – telling their stories and our own.It’s easy – and, we hope, fun.

Everyone likes to get postcards, and #MyParallelTraces lets you create, send and receive them online. We provide a fill-in form where you can post a picture of a Jewish heritage site and add both a brief explanation of its historical context and – importantly – a brief personal reflection on your own connection with that site. It can be a family connection, a historic connection, or a connection that is religious, urban, literary, or one rooted in memory, work, art, or – indeed – anything else. Think of it as a picture postcard with a printed caption and your own personal message you’re sending to a friend or loved one.

The postcards we receive – with their photos and reflections – will be uploaded to our web site as a growing gallery: an open and pluralistic approach to Jewish heritage that offers a more personal perspective. It will provide space to interpret and reinterpret the heritage, and to ask ourselves about the meaning of each site – not just in the past, but also in the present and future.

Following the guidelines of The Council of Europe’s Faro Convention, #MyParallelTraces is a new means of looking at heritage by reframing relations among stakeholders in a way that highlights the essential role of individuals and heritage communities alike. Jewish heritage is both a source and a resource, and everyone’s opinion, interests and aspirations count. Including yours!

The #MyParallelTraces virtual mailbox is open – so fill in the form and send us your virtual postcards!

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Your digital postcards

Virtually explore Jewish Heritage sites – click on the pictures to read the personal reflections!

It was taken last year during the visit of the Jewish Quarter. It was taken by my boyfriend, Eloi.

Build in early 1900s, not that long ago roof was still visible atop. Unfortunately soon to be demolished.

The Synagogue in Klimontów was built between 1848 and 1851. It was erected on a plot, adjacent to the town square. During World War II, the Germans devastated the synagogue and turned into a storehouse. On the front of the building there was the following inscription in Hebrew: “NOTHING ELSE IT IS THAN THE HOUSE OF GOD AND GATE OF HEAVEN” The front elevation is decorated by a four-pillar Ionic portico, crowned with a wooden peak The room of prayer, there survived a niche after a Torah-ark, adorned with images of lions and remains of wall-paintings. Single windows surmounted with a cornice are situated at the sides of the building.

Jewish Cemetery in Warsaw- one of the biggest in Europe. The Okopowa street Jewish Cemetery in Warsaw - one of the biggest in Europe.

Yossel of Rosheim -- Joseph ben Gershon Loanz -- (c. 1480 – March, 1554) remains a major figure in the history of Jews in Alsace. He was the great advocate ("shtadlan") of the German and Polish Jews during the reigns of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I and Charles V, appointed as governor of all Jews of Germany. An exhibition on Yossel de Rosheim took place in 2013 at the Bibliotheque Humaniste in Selestat, France. It was a French-German co-production that aimed to demonstrate the place of the Jews in humanist Europe and the role of a man from Alsace who played a major role in the defense of the Jewish minority with the German emperors. This picture shows a poster for a exhibit and a letter from Yossel that was one of the items on display.

Built in 1858, devastated during Kristallnacht in 1938, rebuilt after WW2 and used as storage near the railway station. There is still a Star of David motif in the round window.

In the very heart of the Jewish neighborhood in Girona, the central open space of the Museum of Jewish History.

The grave of my uncle, Abraham Grünpeter, in the Weissensee Jewish cemetery, Berlin.

The Vittorio Veneto cemetery was founded in 1857. There are two inscriptions on the columns that support the gate, which opens onto a narrow gravel driveway leading to the ohel. On the sides are the burials under the shade of tall trees. In front of the entrance some plaques are walled, with the names of the people buried behind the wall.

This is the renovated synagogue, initially built in 1911 in Kulashi, a small village in the Georgian region- Imereti. This village first appears in historical resources in approximately the 16th century. By the order of the Mikeladze family, seven Jewish peasants were allowed to live here by the end of the 17th century. Over time, Jewish people from different Georgian regions settled here, resulting in a thriving community with many synagogues. Kulashi became home to one of the largest Georgian Jewish communities, where the majority of the population were Georgian Jews until the 1990s when a great wave of migration started. Currently, no Jewish families live in Kulashi. Today, there are two synagogues, a cemetery, and an Ethnographic Museum of Georgian and Georgian Jews in Kulashi.

House interior on Carrer de Manuel Cúndaro. Jewish Quarter of Girona.

Hanukkah celebration in the patio of the Museum of Jewish History. December 2018.

Carrer de Sant Llorenç is one of the most emblematic and beautiful places in Girona. It is a steep alley, with a sinuous layout, which joins both sides with vaults. Located in the heart of the Jewish quarter, el call, has access to Bonastruc ça Porta Center where you can visit the Museum of Jewish History.

This is the Jewish cemetery in the small village Atskuri, in the remote Samtskhe-Kavakheti region of Georgia. The cemetery lies on the slope of a crumbling 10th century fortress. The tombstones are hundreds of years old; the Jews of this village left entirely by 1908, and went mostly to the nearby city of Akhaltsikhe. But the cemetery walls were built in the 1960’s - by the Jews of Akhaltsikhe, who continued to maintain the cemetery of their ancestors and neighbours.

Out of a score of synagogue in Drohobycz before WW2, only two remain standing -- including this one, the Great or Choral Synagogue, built between 1842 and 1865. It was one of the largest Synagogues in Galicia at the time. After World War II, authorities converted the building to a warehouse and it deteriorated, even after it was returned to Jewish ownership in 1993. This is how it looked in 2009 -- it was reinagurated in 2018 following a restoration funded by Viktor Felixovich Vekselberg.

Cathedral Road Synagogue was an imposing building of an unusual design in a smart part of Cardiff. It was opened in 1897. You can still see the foundation stone laid by Colonel Goldsmid, and the four cornerstones laid by the Chief Rabbi, Lord Windsor (Lord Lieutenant of Glamorgan as well as Mayor of Cardiff), Lord Tredegar and the MP Mr J. M. Maclean. The last service was in 1988, when a combination of a diminishing congregation and increasingly expensive repairs led to its closure. It was converted into serviced offices, but the front of the building has been preserved.

The Jewish cemetery in Kotor is located among Venetian and Austro-Hungarian palaces and fortifications. It is not big in size but is a significant reminder of the Jewish life in the Bay. The burial plot was granted to the Jews by the Bishop of Kotor. The cemetery was in use in the 19th and early 20th century. Though in an urban area of the town, the cemetery is immersed in greenery and is easily accessible. It is in good condition and regularly maintained. It is visited by numerous tourists who come to Kotor on cruises

The Old Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław is one of the most stirring and peaceful places in the city. It is also a place where one can find beautiful sculptures and nature, not only history. Nowadays part of the City Museum it is full of stories and proof of commitment of those brilliant citizens of Wrocław who were buried here.

The Cereal Warehouses of the Ghetto of Vittorio Veneto -- built in 1771 and currently awaiting restoration, is the only remaining building of an important Jewish Community. The community, established in 1597, also owned a beautiful synagogue: all the furnishings of the synagogue are now on display in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where they were transported in 1964. Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart's famous librettist, was born in this Jewish community. Son of Geremia Conegliano and Anna Cabiglio, his name was Emanuele; when the whole family converted to Christianity in 1763, he assumed the name of Lorenzo Da Ponte. On the facade of the portico of the warehouses of the ghetto is a plaque that bears, in Hebrew and Latin letters, a verse from the Bible: “You really are my King and my Lord, who gives us every salvation. You saved and gave strength to Jacob "; below, another small plaque shows the date 1771 and the monogram of the owner GC (Giacobbe Conegliano).

The Jewish district, "El Call", located in the middle of the Barri Gotic in Barcelona.

Every year, tens of thousands of Hasidic Jews from all over the world come to visit the small village of Bodrogkeresztúr (in yiddish: Kerestir) on northeast Hungary. The reason of their coming is the jahrzeit (death anniversary) of the wonder rabbi of the village, Reb Shayele who has become became a "superstar" and a symbolic figure of charity in the hassidic world. The Jewish cemetery with the rabbi's grave lies above a vineyard, with an amazing view.

Oneg Shabbat, Gemilut Hasidim society building. (Arch. Samuel Sumbul, 1928), The Society’s main aim was charity work, care for the elderly, palliative care, and burials. The entrance archway carries inscriptions in both Hebrew and Cyrillic - the name of the Society as well as the quotation from Psalm 71: “Do not reject me in my old age, do not forsake me when my strength has abandoned me.” In 1941 the Nazis and their collaborators ordered it to be used as one of two locations for the Jewish hospital, whose staff and patients were deported to the camp at Sajmište in Belgrade and murdered. After the Holocaust, the building was confiscated from the Jewish community and used as a cinema and cultural center with diverse and vibrant contemporary programs. It was returned under the law on restitution in 2018. Today, it is restarting its life as the home of the Jewish Cultural Center Belgrade - JCC.

The Jewish cemetery of Rožna Dolina (Valdirose in Italian, Rosenthal in German) was founded at the beginning of the XIX century and contains around 900 matzevot. It is located in the Slovenian village of Rožna Dolina in the municipality of Nova Gorica, just 500 meters away from the Italian border. Until 1947, when the territory where it lies was incorporated to the new-born postwar Republic of Yugoslavia, it served the Jewish community of Gorizia, Italy. In the cemetery are buried many important people, such as the philosopher Carlo Michelstaedter, the Rabbis Isacco Samuele Reggio and Abramo Vita Reggio, the journalist Carolina Luzzatto, and others.

Part of the permanent exhibition "What We Were Unable to Shout Out to the World" at the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, July 2018. The exhibiton is dedicated to the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto and its creators, the Oneg Shabbat group, an underground group created by historian Emanuel Ringelblum. Around 60 Jewish people including scientists, teachers, writers and social activists were chronicling every day life inside the Warsaw Ghetto.

Market place in Pilvishok before WW2. Destroyed by German bombing in 1944. Market place in Pilvishok (Pilviskiai), in southwestern Lithuania, before WW2. Jews settled here in the 18th Century. In 1941 almost all Jews in the town were rounded up, murdered, and buried in mass graves by the Nazis and Lithuanian collaborators.

Etz Hayyim Synagogue was originally built as a chuch and then was converted into a Synagogue in the 17th century. After the destruction of Jewish community during the Holocaust, the synagogue was desecrated and abandoned. In 1995, Nikos Stavroulakis initiated efforts to save and restore the building and develop a community. The synagouge was rededicated in 1999 and today (after Nikos death in 2017) it is a place of gathering for Jews but also an interfaith place which welcomes everyone regardless of religion.

This is the grave of Sigmund Baginsky in Wroclaw’s New Jewish Cemetery on ul. Lotnicza, established in 1902. The cemetery is massive. It was neglected for years, overgrown, marked by broken headstones and 'missing' headstones. It is nevertheless a beautiful place, not least thanks in recent years to the extraordinary efforts of caretaker Piotr Gotowicki, and it is still used by the local jewsih community.

This steep narrow street was the centre of the “call” (medieval Jewish quarter) in the 15th century. Today it is one of the most emblematic streets in the old city of Girona.

Patio of the Bonastruc ça Porta Centre, home to the Museum of Jewish History and the Nahmanides Institute for Jewish Studies; an iconic image of the call (ancient Jewish quarter) of Girona, Catalonia, Spain.

A former Jewish residence in Sighet, Romania, one of the most dynamic Jewish centers in Europe before the Second World War. Sighet is the historical center of Maramures County, in Northern Transylvania, Romania. The Jewish settlement in Maramures began during the 17th century when Hungary was still a part of the Ottoman Empire and intensified during the 18th and 19th centuries. Sighet, the county's seat, soon become the religious and cultural center for all the Jews in Maramures. In 1870 about 2,500 Jews lived in Sighet, composing almost a quarter of the population. Until the second world war, the Jewish population in Sighet got to12 000, almost 40% of the local population. Many Jews in the villages of Maramures engaged in agriculture and many merchants and industrialists dealing with their products settled in Sighet and contributed to its prosperity.

The White Stork Synagogue in Wrocław was built in the 1829 and it survived the Crystal Night pogrom and the IIWW. It was less lucky during communistic regime in Poland, when it was falling into almost total decay. Now, restored and full of life, it is a vital cultural center.

The Sant Felip Neri Square is a singular place that is located inside the old Jewish quarter of Barcelona called, Call. The Jewish presence began shortly after the foundation of the Roman colony of Barcino, reaching in the middle ages the ten percent of the population of the whole city. This presence ended with a religious pogrom in 1391. This corner of the city changed over the centuries and a Baroque church and the buildings of the old guilds of the cauldrons and shoemakers were located there. In 1938, during the Civil War, the Italian air force, allied with Franco, bombed the square causing more than 40 victims.

Casa Adret is a transversal project that aims to create a space that serves as melting pot of history, community, research, conference space, centre for social change and a space for connection for all interested in Jewish life. Set in a beautiful medieval house on the main Street of the “Call”, the historic Jewish neighbourhood, the property was owned by the Jewish family of Astruch Adret until the riots of 1391, which caused the disintegration of Barcelona’s once thriving Jewish community. An architectural gem, the building hosts features of original gothic structures mixed with modern, where the two carved spaces for mezuzahs found in the door frames act as a reminder of the era this house once thrived.