We cordially invite you to the international conference "Preserving Memory. Holocaust Monuments and Memorials in Central Europe", which will take place on 17-18 September 2024 in Academic Conference Center (Husova 4a, Prague).

This international conference focuses on the expert evaluation of the topic of Holocaust monuments and memorials in Central Europe. The aim of the meeting is to present the historical, political, social and art historical circumstances of the creation of these often neglected works and their theoretical starting points, as well as the subsequent reception of Holocaust monuments and memorials.
In the broader social and cultural context, we are interested in the problem of the formation of Jewish and Roma identity; and, at the same time, the topic of the individual, collective and cultural memory of the Holocaust tragedy and its projection into specific monument and memorial realizations.

Programme

17 September 2024

9.30 Registration

10.00—12.30
The Pinkas Synagogue in Prague: Only a List of Names?
Eva Janáčová (Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague)

Cemeteries in Terezín as a Competition of Different Types of Collective and Cultural Memory
Jiří Holý (Charles Univerity, Prague)

The 1968 Competition for the Urban, Architectural and Artistic Design of Memorial Sites in Terezín and Litoměřice
Jakub Hauser (Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague)

Between Heaven and Earth: Art projects by Aleš Veselý for the Terezín Memorial
Monika Čejková (National Gallery, Prague)

Hauntings of Modernity: Competing Affective Legacies of Collective Memories in Jaroslav Brychta and Jaroslava Brychtová’s Commemorative World War II Monument in Železný Brod, Czech Republic
Amy J. Hughes (Corning Museum of Glass, New York)

14.00—16.00
Martyr Monuments and Other Memorials Created by Jewish Communities in Rural Hungary between 1945 and 1956
Viktória Bányai (Hungarian Research Network, Budapest) – Kinga
Frojimovics (Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies)

Public, Private, Political: Early Postwar Holocaust Memorials in Hungary
Daniel Véri (Museum of Fine Arts – Central European Research
Institute for Art History, Budapest)

The Non-existent Wallenberg Monument in Budapest and its Significance for the Understanding of Holocaust Rescue and Human Rights
Kata Bohus (University of Tromsø – The Arctic University of Norway)

‘New’ Holocaust Monuments in Budapest: Contexts and Debates András Szécsényi (Historical Archives of the Hungarian State
Security, Budapest)

16.30—18.00
‘We Came, We Saw, We Left’: Holocaust Tourism and Affective Engagement
Beatrice Leeming (University of Cambridge)

Holocaust Memory under Pressure: The Effect of International Politics and Russia’s War against Ukraine on Urban Holocaust Memory
Nicolas Dreyer (Otto Friedrich University, Bamberg)

18 September 2024

10.00—12.00
The Memorial that Never Was: How ‘Places of Remembrance’ Eclipsed Collective Memory in a Berlin Neighbourhood
Linda Mannheim (University of Westminster, London)

The Jewish Memorial Surrounded by Other Memorials: The Case of Mauthausen
Simone Evangelisti (Italy)

Counter Monuments Revised: The Empty Library as a Case Study
Meital Raz (University of Amsterdam)

A ‘Still, Small Voice’: The Ironic Power of Humility in Gunter Demnig’s Stolpersteine
Deborah Johnson (Providence College)

13.30—15.30
An Ephemeral ‘Monument’ for the Trauma of the Place: The Warsaw Ghetto and Joanna Rajkowska’s Public Intervention Oxygenator
Jan Elantkowski (Eötvös Loránd University – Ludwig
Museum, Budapest)

The ‘Wandering Monument’ of Lublin Ghetto: Holocaust Memory in Communist Poland
Teresa Klimowicz (Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Lublin)

Torn Subjectivity: An Artistic Response to Memory and the Difficult Past in the Work of Miroslaw Balka
Lisa Moran (Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin)

Preserving Jewish History by Street Art: A Case of Tomaszów Mazowiecki
Justyna Biernat (Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw)

16.00—17.30
Against the National Narrative? Commemorating the Genocide of German Sinti and Roma in Berlin-Marzahn
Leonard Stöcklein (Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg)

Roma Holocaust Memorials in the Czech Republic: Similar Camps, Different Development
Anna Míšková (Museum of Romani Culture, Brno)

Final discussion