A Testimony of Survival: A Meeting with Bernard Offen, a Concentration Camp Survivor
A series of events*
European Days of Jewish Culture 2023**
Thursdays, September 7th, September 28th, and October 12th at 6pm
We would like to invite you to unique meetings with Bernard Offen, a true hero and a Holocaust Survivor. The meetings will be a chance to get to know the life story of Mr. Offen, but also to understand the deep human strength and resilience in the most difficult circumstances.
During the meetings Mr. Bernard Offen will share his personal story from the times, when he was a little boy living in the district of Podgórze and the difficult time he had to survive during the Second World War. We will get to know his childhood memories, hear more about his parents, brothers, and friends, but also his painful experiences from the ghetto and concentration camps such as Plaszow, Auschwitz, and Birkenau.
Bernard Offen will not only share his painful life story but also tell us more about determination and courage, which allowed him to survive and go beyond the borders of human suffering. His story could be an inspiration to all of us who are searching for hope in difficult times.
The meetings will be also an occassion for asking questions about more detailed aspects of Mr. Offen's life story and for learning from his experiences.
We would like to invite all of those who want to listen to an amazing story of survival, which underlines the value of love, respect, and compassion, which can survive the most difficult moments of the history of humankind.
Led by: Adam Musiał
Free admission, space is limited (80 seats).
In Polish.
* We reserve the right of changing this on-site event to an online live broadcast.
** This meeting is part of the pan-European cultural festival: The European Days of Jewish Culture 2023, which is organized by the European Association for the Preservation and Promotion of Jewish Culture and Heritage (AEPJ). The Polish part of this program is co-organized by The Taube Center for Jewish Life & Learning.
A Testimony of Survival: A Meeting with Bernard Offen, a Concentration Camp Survivor
A series of events*
European Days of Jewish Culture 2023**
Thursdays, September 7th, September 28th, and October 12th at 6pm
We would like to invite you to unique meetings with Bernard Offen, a true hero and a Holocaust Survivor. The meetings will be a chance to get to know the life story of Mr. Offen, but also to understand the deep human strength and resilience in the most difficult circumstances.
During the meetings Mr. Bernard Offen will share his personal story from the times, when he was a little boy living in the district of Podgórze and the difficult time he had to survive during the Second World War.
The event is dedicated to the memory of the Jewish community in Senec. It is a combination of lecture presenting family histories, oral history interviews and walk around the town connected to the authentic places of family stories – the former dwellings. Learn about the daily life of the community before, during and after the Holocaust. The team of three experts has dedicated years of research of the local Jewish history and are the authors of the prepared permanent exhibition in the restored synagogue in Senec. The event takes place two days after the national Holocaust memorial day (September 8), when the names of Jewish families will be publicly read during the ceremony on the town square in front of the synagogue.
Mihael Toš, author of the Kein Kampf project, will present and describe the remains of the Jewish cultural heritage in Slovenia on an interactive map. Events will take place on 4 and 18 September 2023 in Hotel Mitra.
To what extent are people of today's generation united by a violent past and the memory of that past? What forms of subjectivity emerge through different memories of atrocities and what forms of collective action facilitate or hinder these memories?
Conference in Catalan.
Free entrance until full capacity.
Na predavanju bo predstavljena družinska zgodba znane murskosoboške tiskarske družine Hahn vse od naselitve v Prekmurju do holokavsta. Predavatelja bosta zgodovinar Dejan Süč in domoznanec Pokrajinske in študijske knjižnice Murska Sobota dr. Albert Halász.
Renowned Slovenian literary and film maker and photographer Dušan Šarotar is the author of numerous books of prose, poetry and essays, as well as more than twenty scripts for documentaries and short feature films. The central theme of his novels, poetry and films is the fate of the Jewish community and the Holocaust in Murska Sobota and more widely in Prekmurje. On April 26, 1944, the Nazis and Hungarian fascists deported almost the entire Jewish community from Prekmurje to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Among the handful who survived the war was Šarotar's grandfather Franc Schwartz, "who never spoke about it". His story is also the common thread of Šarotar's novels Billiards in Dobray and Zvezdna karta, and at the forefront of the writer's interest are also memory, sadness, feeling and the human soul.
In the lecture, Maja Kutin, a leading collaborator in the project of cataloging the book heritage of the pre-war Slovenian community in Prekmurje, will present the stories behind the selected treasures of prayer books and ritual books. Members of the local Jewish community used the Hebrew Bible and the Torah with references from the former rabbis of Murska Sobota to swear an oath before the Murska Sobota court, and the signatures in mourning prayer books for the dead reveal the stories of families that influenced the economic and social development of Prekmurje. The valuable collection is kept in the Provincial and Study Library of Murska Sobota.
(Due to the limited number of places, prior registration with name and surname is mandatory by September 18, 2023 at office@judovskozdruzenje.si.)
The Ljubljana Synagogue opened on November 9, 2021, the ceremonial introduction of the Torah scroll was attended by a delegation of the Conference of European Rabbis, and this time the doors of the synagogue are being opened to the general public for the first time. The presentation of the space will be followed by a lecture by the chief rabbi for Slovenia, Ariel Haddad, entitled The Spiritual Value of Memory in the Torah. Collective and individual, historical and narrative – memory is the foundation upon which Judaism is forged. The root ZHR in Hebrew means "memory" and "remembering", as well as "manhood"… How does memory fertilize Judaism and root it in the fertile soil of four thousand years of history? The lecture will be in English, translation will not be provided.