Jewish Culture, etc., Festivals in 2012

Festival of the Jewish Book, Ferrara, Italy, 2011. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

As usual, I am trying to put together a list of as many as possible of the numerous Jewish festivals -- culture, film, dance, etc -- that take place each year around Europe.  I've already missed a few that have taken place this winter -- Please help me by sending me information!

The big culture festivals and other smaller events make good destinations around which to center a trip. Some, like the annual Festival of Jewish Culture in Krakow, are huge events lasting a week or more, which draw thousands of people and offer scores or sometimes hundreds of performances, lectures, concerts, exhibits and the like. Other festivals are much less ambitious. Some are primarily workshops but also feature concerts. Many of the same artists perform at more than one festival.

 The list will be growing and growing -- and again,  I ask my readers to please send me information and links to upcoming events. Thanks!



ALL OVER EUROPE

Sept. 2, 2012 -- 13th European Day of Jewish Culture. This year's theme is Jewish Humor


AUSTRIA

April 19-May 23 -- Vienna --  Weanhean: Das Wienerliedfestival (Jewish music and performers are featured this year)


CROATIA

 August 28-Sept. 6 -- Pula -- Bejahad: the Jewish Cultural Scene


CZECH REPUBLIC

July 5-8 -- Boskovice -- UniJazz2012: 19th Festival for the Jewish Quarter

July 30-August 4 -- Trebic --  Trebic Jewish Festival held in one of the most extensive and best-preserved old Jewish quarters in Europe, part of the town's UNESCO-listed historic center.


GERMANY

April 9-15 -- Weimar -- Weimar Winter Edition

 June 3-16 -- Berlin & Potsdam -- 18th Jewish Film Festival


July 21-August 21 -- Weimar -- Yiddish Summer Weimar 


GREAT BRITAIN


June 24-July 1 -- Leeds -- 12th International Jewish Performing Arts Festival


HUNGARY


April 6-14 -- Budapest -- Quarter6Quarter7 Spring Festival, over Passover

July 20-22 -- Bank Lake -- Bankito Festival

November 10-18 -- Szombathely --  Jewish Festival Szombathely


ITALY

April 28-May 1 -- Ferrara -- Festival of the Jewish Book

July 29-August 5 -- Straits of Messina -- Horcynus Festival This year's focus is on Israel and Jewish culture.

September 2-8 -- Puglia Region -- Lech Lecha Festival

November 3-7 -- Rome -- Pitigliani Kolno'a Jewish & Israeli Film Festival

POLAND

April 17-21 -- Radom -- 4th annual "Meeting with Jewish Culture"

April 18-22 -- Warsaw -- New Jewish Music Festival

April 25-29 -- Warsaw -- Jewish Motifs International Film Festival

May 11-13 -- Oswiecim -- Oswiecim Life Festival

May 13-16 -- Warsaw -- Jewish Book Days 

June  2 -- Krakow -- 7@Nite - Night of the Synagogues

June 29-July 8 -- Krakow -- Jewish Culture Festival

August 10-12  -- Jelenia Gora -- Jewish Culture Festival

August 26-September 2 -- Warsaw -- Singer's Warsaw Festival

September 14-22 -- Lodz -- Festival of Four Cultures

October 4-7 -- Wlodawa -- Festival of Three Cultures



ROMANIA

April 27-May 3 -- Bucharest -- 2nd Bucharest Jewish Film Festival


RUSSIA

March 8, 2012 -- Moscow -- Yiddish Fest

SERBIA

June 20-24 -- Belgrade -- Ethno Fusion Fest: Many musics in the courtyard of the Belgrade Synagogue


SLOVAKIA

July 7-15 -- Kosice -- Mazal Tov -- 1st Jewish Culture Festival in Kosice

UKRAINE


Sept. 6-12 -- Drohobych -- Fifth Bruno Schulz Festival




---

Jewish Culture, etc., Festivals in 2012

Festival of the Jewish Book, Ferrara, Italy, 2011. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

As usual, I am trying to put together a list of as many as possible of the numerous Jewish festivals -- culture, film, dance, etc -- that take place each year around Europe.  I've already missed a few that have taken place this winter -- Please help me by sending me information!

The big culture festivals and other smaller events make good destinations around which to center a trip. Some, like the annual Festival of Jewish Culture in Krakow, are huge events lasting a week or more, which draw thousands of people and offer scores or sometimes hundreds of performances, lectures, concerts, exhibits and the like. Other festivals are much less ambitious. Some are primarily workshops but also feature concerts. Many of the same artists perform at more than one festival.

 The list will be growing and growing -- and again,  I ask my readers to please send me information and links to upcoming events. Thanks!



ALL OVER EUROPE

Sept. 2, 2012 -- 13th European Day of Jewish Culture. This year's theme is Jewish Humor


AUSTRIA

April 19-May 23 -- Vienna --  Weanhean: Das Wienerliedfestival (Jewish music and performers are featured this year)


CROATIA

 August 28-Sept. 6 -- Pula -- Bejahad: the Jewish Cultural Scene


CZECH REPUBLIC

July 5-8 -- Boskovice -- UniJazz2012: 19th Festival for the Jewish Quarter

July 30-August 4 -- Trebic --  Trebic Jewish Festival held in one of the most extensive and best-preserved old Jewish quarters in Europe, part of the town's UNESCO-listed historic center.


GERMANY

April 9-15 -- Weimar -- Weimar Winter Edition

 June 3-16 -- Berlin & Potsdam -- 18th Jewish Film Festival


July 21-August 21 -- Weimar -- Yiddish Summer Weimar 


GREAT BRITAIN


June 24-July 1 -- Leeds -- 12th International Jewish Performing Arts Festival


HUNGARY


April 6-14 -- Budapest -- Quarter6Quarter7 Spring Festival, over Passover

July 20-22 -- Bank Lake -- Bankito Festival


ITALY

April 28-May 1 -- Ferrara -- Festival of the Jewish Book


POLAND

April 17-21 -- Radom -- 4th annual "Meeting with Jewish Culture"

April 18-22 -- Warsaw -- New Jewish Music Festival

April 25-29 -- Warsaw -- Jewish Motifs International Film Festival

May 11-13 -- Oswiecim -- Oswiecim Life Festival

May 13-16 -- Warsaw -- Jewish Book Days 

June  2 -- Krakow -- 7@Nite - Night of the Synagogues

June 29-July 8 -- Krakow -- Jewish Culture Festival


ROMANIA

April 27-May 3 -- Bucharest -- 2nd Bucharest Jewish Film Festival


RUSSIA

March 8, 2012 -- Moscow -- Yiddish Fest


UKRAINE


SEPT. 6-12 -- Drohobych -- Fifth Bruno Schulz Festival




---

Germany -- Travel story in Huffpost on Jewish sights in Worms

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Worms, near Frankfurt in (western) Germany, is home to some of the most historic Jewish heritage sites in Europe -- the thousand-year-old Jewish cemetery (believed to be the oldest in Europe aside from ancient Roman-era catacombs) and the rebuilt 11th century Rashi synagogue with its museum.  The synagogue was totally reconstructed from rubble between 1959 and 1961 -- one of the few synagogues of recognized historical importance in Europe that in the first three decades after World War II  were reconstructed or restored in ways that retained their Jewish identity.

Alan Elsner reflected on his recent visit there for the Huffington Post.

List of Jewish Culture, etc Festivals 2011

At the Budapest Jewish Summer Festival. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

As usual, I am trying to put together a list of as many as possible of the numerous Jewish festivals -- culture, film, dance, etc -- that take place each year around Europe. Please help me by sending me information!

The big culture festivals and other smaller events make good destinations around which to center a trip. Some, like the annual Festival of Jewish Culture in Krakow, are huge events lasting a week or more, which draw thousands of people and offer scores or sometimes hundreds of performances, lectures, concerts, exhibits and the like. Other festivals are much less ambitious. Some are primarily workshops but also feature concerts. Many of the same artists perform at more than one festival.

 The list will be growing and growing -- and again,  I ask my readers to please send me information and links to upcoming events. Thanks!


ALL OVER EUROPE -- Sept. 4 -- 12th European Day of Jewish Culture. The theme this year is "Facing the Future."

AUSTRIA

April 3-7 -- Vienna -- Jewish Film Noir festival

Nov. 5-2- -- Vienna -- KlezMORE music festival


CZECH REPUBLIC

 April 28-May 1 --Mikulov -- Days of Jewish Culture

June 12-16 -- Terezin -- Defiant Requiem performances

July 7-10 -- Boskovice -- UniJazz/Boskovice Festival. The festival is focused on saving and restoring of local Jewish quarter.

July 25-30 -- Trebic --  Trebic Jewish Festival, held in one of the most extensive and best-preserved old Jewish quarters in Europe, part of the town's UNESCO-listed historic center.

July 25-26 -- Namest nad Oslavou -- Jewish music at Folk Holidays Festival

FRANCE

May 10-13 -- Saint-Gildas-des-Bois -- Festival MusiqueS Klezmer

June 14-30 -- Paris -- Festival of Jewish Cultures

July 2-10 -- Bréau (Gard) -- Le Yiddishland à la rencontre des Cévennes

GERMANY

March 11-13 -- Fuerth -- International Klezmer Festival

May  18-31   -- Berlin/Potsdam -- 17th Jewish Film Festival 

June 23-26 -- Berlin -- "Sounds no Walls" -- Jazz and Jewish Culture

July -- Weimar -- Yiddish Summer Weimar

Oct. 23-Nov. 6 -- Dresden -- 15th Yiddish Music and Theater Weeks

November 12-30 -- Munich -- 25th edition of Jewish Culture Days


HUNGARY

April 28-May 4 -- Budapest -- First Israeli Documentary Film Festival

June 5 -- Budapest -- Judafest

Aug. 4-7 -- Bank Lake -- Bankito Festival

Aug. 27-Sept. 5 -- Budapest -- Jewish Summer Festival 

ITALY

May 7-9 -- Ferrara -- Festival of the Jewish Book in Italy


June 2-3 -- Casale Monferrato -- Oy Oy Oy Festival


June 26-July 17 -- in val d'Aosta -- Centrad festival/workshops in Ashkenazic culture

Nov. 12-16 -- Rome -- Pitigliani Kolno'a Festival (music, film, etc)

Nov. 20-27 -- Venice -- Festival of Polish-Jewish Culture 

NETHERLANDS

October -- many venues around the country -- International Jewish Music Festival -- . See the web site for a calendar of Jewish music events.

POLAND

May 1-6 -- Czestochowa -- International Festival of Sacred Music


May 6, 7, 13 -- Opole -- Days of Jewish Music and Culture

May 14-22 -- Warsaw -- Otwarta-Twarda Jewish Festival

May 15-18 -- Warsaw -- 14th Jewish Book Days

May 29-June 3 --- Wroclaw -- 13th Simcha Jewish Culture Festival

June 1 -- Szydlow -- 9th Encounters with Jewish Culture

June 4 -- Krakow -- Night of the Synagogues

June 11-17 -- Oswiecim -- Oswiecim Life Festival (international music festival with Jewish content, held in the town where Auschwitz is located)

June 18-19 -- Chmielnik -- 9th Encounters with Jewish Culture

June 24-July 3 -- Krakow -- Festival of Jewish Culture

August 19-21 -- Lublin -- Shalom: Encounters with Jewish Culture

August 20-21 -- Lelow -- 9th Cholent and Ciulim festival

August 27-Sept. 4 -- Warsaw -- Singer's Warsaw Festival


ROMANIA

June 16-19 -- Bucharest -- Klezmer & More Festival

June 20-26 -- Bucharest -- First Bucharest Jewish Film Festival



SERBIA

June 12-21 -- Belgrade -- Ethno Fusion Fest (in courtyard of Belgrade synagogue)


SWITZERLAND

June 18-19 -- Geneva -- Friends of Jewish Music Festival

UKRAINE

July 24 -- L'viv -- L'vivKlezFest

Germany and Poland -- Fire (Worms) and Flood (Auschwitz)

There has been an arson attack on the historic (rebuilt) synagogue in Worms, Germany, apparently by pro-Palestinian protesters who took out their anger at Israel by attacking a synagogue that had been built in the 11th century, destroyed by the Nazis, and totally rebuilt from the rubble and reconsecrated in 1961. It forms part of  a museum complex -- including the "Rashi House" Museum -- but also is used at times for services. The great 11th century Jewish scholar Rashi studied here, and the old Jewish cemetery in Worms is the oldest suriving in Europe, aside from the Jewish catacombs in Rome.

Reports said fires were set Sunday night at eight spots around the synagogue, but the fire department acted quickly and there was no serious damage. Police were reported to have found at the scene eight copies of a letter  that read, "Until you give the Palestinians peace, we will not give you peace."

Meanwhile, severe rains and flooding in southern Poland forced the closure of the Auschwitz Museum and Memorial at the former Nazi death camp and threatened the camp's archives.

Jewish Culture/Music/Etc Festivals 2010

 Posters for last year's Quarter6Quarter7 Hanukkah festival in Budapest. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

                                                                                            

A number of Jewish culture festivals of all sorts take place around Europe in the spring and summer (and beyond). Some are dedicated just to music. Some to film. Others are much broader. As far as I know, there is no central web site where you can find information on all of them. I will begin to post information here on dates and venues. I ask my readers to please send me information to include!

The culture festivals and other smaller events make good destinations around which to center a trip. Some, like the annual Festival of Jewish Culture in Krakow, are huge events lasting a week or more, which draw thousands of people and offer scores or sometimes hundreds of performances, lectures, concerts, exhibits and the like. Other festivals are much less ambitious. Some are primarily workshops but also feature concerts. Many of the same artists perform at more than one festival.

 The list will be growing and growing -- and again,  I ask my readers to please send me information and links to upcoming events. Thanks!


ALL OVER EUROPE -- 11th annual European Day of Jewish Culture. The first Sunday in September -- Sept. 5. Events take place in nearly 30 countries. The theme this year is Art and Judaism.

AUSTRIA

April 22-27 -- Vienna --  Stay Jewish! (Film Festival)

October 14-November 14 -- Vienna -- Yiddish Culture Autumn (web site under construction)

November 6 -  21 -- Vienna -- KlezMORE festival (this year's program is not up yet)

CROATIA

Aug. 23-31 -- Opatija -- Bejahad 2010


CZECH REPUBLIC

July 8-11 -- Boskovice -- Boskovice Festival. Mainly jazz, but also an emphasis on Jewish culture, given the importance of the well-preserved former Jewish quarter, cemetery and Jewish museum in the restored synagogue.

July 29-31 -- Trebic -- Seventh edition of the Trebic Jewish Culture Festival, held in the Czech Republic's most extensive preserved former Jewish quarter

FRANCE

April 9 - July 18 -- Paris -- Radical Jewish Culture exhibit (and concerts), Jewish Museum

June 13-28 -- Paris --  6th Festival of Jewish Cultures

July 5-9 -- Paris -- Klezmer Paris festival Lots of workshops from an all-star international team of  musicians and teachers.

November 6-13 -- Lyons -- International Jewish Music Festival 

Nov.21-Dec. 13 -- Paris -- Jazz'n'Klezmer festival, 9th edition.

GERMANY

March 5-14  -- Fürth -- Fürth International Klezmer Festival (12th edition)

July 3-August 2  -- Weimar -- Yiddish Summer Weimar

October 17-31 -- Dresden -- The 14th Yiddish Weeks Dresden

November 20-30 -- Munich -- The 24th Jewish Culture Days, Munich (devoted this year to Jewish Berlin)

HUNGARY

April 2-4 -- Budapest -- Mini-Israeli-Film-Festival, Kino cinema club

August 5-8  -- Bank Lake -- Bankito Festival

August 26-Sept. 6 -- Budapest -- Jewish Summer Festival


 ITALY

 March 11 -- Barletta --  Festival Musica Judaica 2009-2010

April 17-21 -- Ferrara -- Festival of the Jewish Book in Italy


April 23-May 23; Sept. 26-Oct. 31 -- Casale Monferrato -- OyOyOy Festival

October 9-13 -- Rome -- International Festival of Jewish Literature

October 23-27 -- Rome -- Kolno'a Israeli Film Festival

NETHERLANDS

April  18-25    -- Leeuwarden -- Yiddish Festival Leeuwarden (takes place every other year)

Oct. 28-31 -- Amsterdam -- International Jewish Music Festival

POLAND

April 9-11 -- Warsaw -- Festival of New Jewish Music

April 20-25 -- Warsaw -- Jewish Motifs International Film Festival

May 23-28 -- Wroclaw -- 12th Simcha Jewish Culture Festival (note -- other events take place May 5-9, with the gala re-opening of the newly restored White Stork Synagogue)

May 15-23 -- Warsaw -- "Otwardatwarda" festival

May 23-26 -- Warsaw --  13th Jewish Book Fair

 June 13-19 -- Sejny -- Musicians' Raft

June -14-16 -- Bialystok -- Zahor Festival of Jewish Culture

June 19-20 -- Chmielnik -- The Eighth "Meetings with Jewish Culture" festival

June 22-26 -- Piotrkow Trybunalski -- Days of Judaism

June 26-July 4 --Krakow -- Festival of Jewish Culture --20th Edition!

 July 13-17 -- Kazimierz Dolny -- Klezmer Music Festival

July 23-25 -- Poznan -- 4th Tzadik Jewish Culture Festival

August 11 -- Lublin -- Shalom. Meetings with Jewish Culture

August 12-14 -- Rymanow -- Shabbat in Rymanow

August 28-Sept. 5 -- Warsaw -- Singer's Warsaw Jewish Culture Festival

October 4-6 -- Slupsk -- Meetings with Jewish Culture 

ROMANIA

May 24-27 -- Timisoara -- Jewish Culture Days


May 26-29 -- Bucharest -- Czech Nine Gates Festival

June 19-22 -- Sighet -- Sighet Jewish Festival

September 2-5 -- Bucharest -- World of Yiddish Festival

RUSSIA

March 29-April 4 -- Moscow -- Yiddish Fest


SWITZERLAND

March 6-April 25 -- Geneva - Printemps Sefarade

U.K.

Feb. 27-March 7 -- London -- Jewish Book Week

June 21-24 -- London -- Cantors Convention

August 8-13 -- London -- KlezFest

Ukraine

July 25 -- L'viv -- LvivKlezFest

October 3-10 -- Kharkov -- Days of Jewish Culture

Germany -- Photos by Julian Voloj

Zeek/The Forward present pictures of German Jewish built heritage, by Julian Voloj. Click HERE

Europe -- Jewish culture festivals

Cantorial concert Jewish Culture Festival Krakow, 2008. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

A number of Jewish culture festivals of all sorts take place around Europe in the spring and summer. Some are dedicated just to music. Others are much broader. As far as I know, there is no central web site where you can find information on all of them. I will begin to post information here on dates and venues. I ask my readers to please send me information to include!

The culture festivals and other smaller events make good destinations around which to center a trip. Some, like the annual Festival of Jewish Culture in Krakow, are huge events lasting a week or more, which draw thousands of people and offer scores or sometimes hundreds of performances, lectures, concerts, exhibits and the like. Other festivals are much less ambitious. Some are primarily workshops but also feature concerts. Many of the same artists perform at more than one festival.

Dance workshop, Krakow, 2008. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

A highlight this summer will be three concerts by the 14-person ensemble of The Other Europeans project on Jewish and Roma culture, music and identity. This is an EU-co-financed project of the Yiddish Summer Weimar, The Festival of Jewish Culture in Krakow and the KlezMORE Festival Vienna.

Here is a partial list, with links to web sites -- I will add to it (here or on separate posts) as information comes in:

All Over Europe -- 10th annual European Day of Jewish Culture. Sept. 6. Events take place in nearly 30 countries. The theme this year is Jewish Festivals and Traditions.


Austria

Vienna -- KlezMORE Festival -- The festival itself is Nov. 7-22. But on June 28 it will present The Other Europeans concert. For detrails contact weimar@the-other-europeans.eu or Ruth Schwarz, tel. +43(0)699 - 1270 8645; e-mail: ruth(at)klezmore-vienna.at


Canada

Montreal -- International Yiddish Theatre Festival -- June 17-25. Not in Europe,
but with a lot of European Jewish/Yiddish Theatres participating.

Laurentian Mountains, Quebec -- KlezKanada Summer Institute, Aug. 24-30

Czech Republic

Boskovice -- Boskovice Festival 2009. July 16-19. Many types of music, performance and exhibitions, etc, aimed at supporting the restoration and promotion of the historic Jewish quarter


France

Paris -- Klezmer Paris -- July 6-10. Mainly workshops in dance, singing, playing.

Germany

Weimar -- Yiddish Summer Weimar. Workshops and concerts the whole month of July. The Other Europeans concert will be July 5.

Great Britain

London -- Nine Gates International Festival of Czech-German-Jewish Culture. May 30-June 1.

London -- Klezfest. August 9-14. There is also a Yiddish crash course August 2-7.

Hungary

Bank Lake -- "Jewstock", August 6-8 (Now called Bankito, with new web site.)

Budapest -- Jewish Summer Festival, Aug. 30-Sept. 7

Lithuania

Vilnius -- Klezmer Festival. Aug. 25-29 (This will take place within the framework of the Third Litvak Congress, a meeting of Jews with origins in Lithuania, Aug. 23-31)

Poland

Wroclaw -- Simcha - 11th Jewish Culture Festival in Wrocław. May 31-June 5

Gdansk -- 10th Baltic Days of Jewish Culture. June 14-15

Lodz -- Jewish Culture Days, Lodz. June 14-30.

Bialystok -- 2nd Zachor Festival of Jewish Culture. June 15-16

Chmielnik -- VII Meeting with Jewish Culture, June 19-21

Krakow -- Festival of Jewish Culture, June 27-July 5. The Other Europeans concert will be July 3.

Warsaw -- Singer's Warsaw Festival of Jewish Culture, Aug. 29-Sept. 6. A big festival, increasingly similar in scope to that in Krakow.

Lodz -- Festival of the Dialogue of Four Cultures. Usually in September

Romania

Oradea, Cluj, Sighet -- Mamaliga and Gefilte Fish. Klezmer workshops and dance house. June 16-24. Oradea June 16, Sighet June 21, Cluj june 24. For Information contact klezromania@gmail.com

Germany -- "Juden" streets exhibit

Here's a head's up for an upcoming exhibit -- OK, it's in San Francisco, at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, and OK, it doesn't open until June, but it deals with Europe and the Museum web site already has a good interactive preview on line.

The exhibit is called The J. Street Project, by photographer/artist Susan Hiller. Hiller became fascinated by the number of streets in Germany referred to Jews and set out to track them down. Explains the Museum press release:

Artist Susan Hiller's chance encounter with a Berlin street called Judenstrasse (Jews Street) in 2002 was the unexpected experience that set into motion an arduous three year journey to find and photograph every street in Germany with the prefix Juden (Jews) in its name - a surprising 303 sites in all. Hiller was initially shocked, but mostly confused by this strangely ambiguous commemoration of people who had been exterminated not so long ago. "The Jews are gone," she says, "but the street names remain as ghosts of the past, haunting the present."

The J.Street Project, an evocative exhibition that includes Hiller's photographs and a film, is the result of her long and fascinating look at this ambiguity. It is on view at the Contemporary Jewish Museum June 18 through October 6, 2009. A limited edition companion book is also available in the Museum's gift store.

At the heart of the exhibition are the more than 300 color photographs of busy boulevards, quiet country alleys and run-of-the-mill suburban streets. Pigment printed in an almost painterly fashion on watercolor paper and identically sized and framed, the images are hung in a seven-foot grid - a silent procession of thoroughfares and the signs that mark them. The mood of each image is distinct as the season, time of day and location change, but in each there is a sense of the unresolved nature of the historical status of these places. A snowy country lane lying along the railroad tracks, while charming, attests to a long and bleak legacy of discrimination and segregation when Jews were not allowed to use main roads and were restricted to paths on the outskirts of villages and towns. Some streets mark ancient Jewish settlements from as early as the 11th Century indicating the historical depth of Jewish life in Germany. A narrow city alley is a testament to how cramped and oppressive ghetto streets were.

And while most of the images are devoid of people, Hiller's camera captures many incidental and transient details - weather, buildings, cows, cars, a few children. "It's their everyday matter-of-fact-ness that makes the photographs unsettling," she says. "They convey an uncanny resonance by revealing connections between some very ordinary contemporary locations, history and remembrance, as the street signs repeatedly name what's missing from all these places."

The exhibition also features Hiller's 67-minute single-channel video that further interrogates the ordinariness surrounding the 303 street signs, which appear to be entirely overlooked by the current residents. Traffic stops at a light, an old man's hat blows off his head, birds flit by, people chat. But these banal moments exist in an uneasy tension with scenes that seem rife with a darker meaning - under a sign that reads Judengasse, another sign points the way to the train station. In the background, trains regularly appear and rush off. Hiller's footage, coolly shifting from emptiness to weightiness, makes no conclusion, but does make the appeal that the traces of history in our surroundings merit interpretation.

Displayed alongside the video and the photographs is a large-scale map of Germany with each location listed and pinpointed. "The multiplicity of these places over the entire country is very special," she says. "And it opens a very different picture of what happened during the Holocaust. Somehow my image had always been of people being rounded up in Berlin and taken away ... But thinking about what happened in a tiny rural village on an old street next to the church, where there had been a Jewish community for generations, evokes a very different picture."

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