IWalk in Luxembourg: Jewish public history in forgotten places

Scientific Conference (2020, November 06)

The contribution will introduce the process of designing two IWalk tours with bachelor students in Luxembourg. The presentation will contain the digital source criticism and new perspectives of digital ... [more ▼]

The contribution will introduce the process of designing two IWalk tours with bachelor students in Luxembourg. The presentation will contain the digital source criticism and new perspectives of digital hermeneutics related to themes of individual stops. The students were divided into two working groups, with each group assigned to a different area. Group A was in charge of designing a virtual tour in Luxembourg City and group B created one for the town of Esch-sur-Alzette. The participants took pictures of current buildings and locations associated with Jewish war history and compared them with original historical photos taken before and during the war. The students were encouraged to reflect on how the appearance and function of certain buildings had changed over time. Besides critical analysis of all pros and cons, I will introduce MAXQDA, a tool for qualitative data analysis to be an invaluable assistant for easier pre-selection of interviews. From a methodological perspective, we were able to judge the relevance of interviews for our work. Students also learned to link different text passages to each other as well as to other documents, educational websites, images or geographical locations. When several students are working with one data set, it is important to create a clear system of memos, codes and intercoder agreements. For a comparative analysis, students used a unified thematic coding tree they had created themselves. The use of a common code book tree enables them to find thematic intersections in their work. The contribution will also demonstrate the purpose of pre-question and post-questions, which make users consider the content of each IWalk stop. [less ▲]

IWalk: Mapping Jewish Life with your Mobile – New ways of teaching Jewish history in Luxembourg

Article for general public (2020)

Developed by USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education, the IWalk is an interactive educational program that connects concrete physical locations with memories of historical ... [more ▼]

Developed by USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education, the IWalk is an interactive educational program that connects concrete physical locations with memories of historical events that took place at those locations. It is currently concentrating on Europe and the US. People walking through the different tours use tablet computers to watch clips of Holocaust survivors and witnesses telling personal stories about the role of the locations in their experiences. The clips are drawn from their testimonies in the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive. [less ▲]

Czechoslovak Jewish emigrants in the clutches of Luxembourg pre-war migration bureaucracy

in Malach Center for Visual History on its 10th Anniversary: Compendium of Papers of the Prague Visual History and Digital Humanities Conference 2020 (2020, January)

My contribution attempts to find answers to the following questions, among others: How did Luxembourg officials deal with Jewish refugees from Eastern European countries? Did the Luxembourgish authorities ... [more ▼]

My contribution attempts to find answers to the following questions, among others: How did Luxembourg officials deal with Jewish refugees from Eastern European countries? Did the Luxembourgish authorities distinguish or give priority to citizens of particular nations? Who was involved in the approval process? Who played the most active role and collected the most controversial information about Jewish immigrants? [less ▲]

The Jew In Czech And Slovak Imagination, 1938-89: Antisemitism, The Holocaust, And Zionism,

in Marginalia Historica : Časopis pro Dějiny Vzdělanosti a Kultury (2020)

Video Content Analysis

Presentation (2019, October)

The course will introduce to the new methods of VHA (Video History Analysis) applied on the Jewish society in Luxembourg. Students will learn how to use the new methods of using archival sources in ... [more ▼]

The course will introduce to the new methods of VHA (Video History Analysis) applied on the Jewish society in Luxembourg. Students will learn how to use the new methods of using archival sources in digital era. During the individual sessions, participants will use the intuitive video editing software on the online IWitness platform, which allow to edit and create their own video recordings. The course also provides an overview of using and editing historical photos, maps and personal documents as archival source. Students will be divided in two working groups and each group will work on different locations, e.g. Group A will be in charge of designing a virtual tour in Luxembourg city and eventually it will be up to them which interesting places they select on and how many stops they include. Group B will create alike in the city of Esch-sur-Alzette. Participants will capture on camera current appearance of buildings and locations associated with Jewish heritage for later comparisons with original photos. The training’s second part offers skills about making a video interview with contemporary Luxembourgish Jewish narrators. Students will learn how to create a short but comprehensive interview right in the streets where they will ask potential Jewish narrators about their memories of specific locations associated with the Luxembourgish Jewish community. They will also learn to compare their work with professional interviews conducted with various interviewees from different Jewish generations. After the training, the participants will collect, edit and upload relevant materials that result in the practical output in the form of the interactive online tour within the phone application (IWalk). [less ▲]

Joint supervision – blessing and cursed paths of doing a PhD at two universities

Article for general public (2019)

As if doing a PhD at one university is not “difficult” enough, I opted for a cotutelle agreement between the University of Luxembourg and Charles University for my PhD project on Cultural and Educational ... [more ▼]

As if doing a PhD at one university is not “difficult” enough, I opted for a cotutelle agreement between the University of Luxembourg and Charles University for my PhD project on Cultural and Educational activities of the Jewish minority in Czechoslovakia and Luxembourg (1945 -1989). Since my roots are in the Czech Republic and Jewish history is very close to me, a jointly supervised thesis seemed like a clear choice. In fact, this was the first step on a tortuous road to a contract that was supposed to make my studies much easier and less stressful. [less ▲]

Transmission of Collective Memory and Jewish Identity in Postwar Jewish Generations through War Souvenirs

in Heritage (2019), 3(2), 1785-1798

The contribution includes a sample of testimonies containing the life stories of Jews born in the aftermath of World War II in two countries (Czechoslovakia and Luxembourg). At that time, Czechoslovak ... [more ▼]

The contribution includes a sample of testimonies containing the life stories of Jews born in the aftermath of World War II in two countries (Czechoslovakia and Luxembourg). At that time, Czechoslovak Jews were living through the era of de-Stalinization and their narratives offer new insights into this segment of Jewish postwar history that differ from those of Jews living in liberal democratic European states. On the basis of personal documents, photos, letters and souvenirs, the conducted interviews highlight an interesting way of maintaining personal memories in Jewish families and how this varies from one generation to the next. In my contribution, I am planning to illustrate the importance of these small artifacts for the transmission of Jewish collective memory. The case study aims to answer the following research questions: What is the relationship between the Jewish postwar generation and their heirlooms? Who is in charge of maintaining Jewish family heirlooms within the family? Are there any intergenerational distinctions in keeping and maintaining the family history? [less ▲]

Repatriation Efforts – Luxembourg State Policy Towards Jews during World War II

E-print/Working paper (2019)

Negotiating the past, present, and future: The Luxembourgish Jewish Museum Project as a Process of Contested memory and imagined futures

Scientific Conference (2019)

There is currently a project underway to establish a Jewish museum in Luxembourg in a restored synagogue just outside the main city center. As this project unfolds, it provides a clear view into the ... [more ▼]

There is currently a project underway to establish a Jewish museum in Luxembourg in a restored synagogue just outside the main city center. As this project unfolds, it provides a clear view into the contestations and negotiations over meaning, representation, Jewishness, and the past, present, and future visions of community that arise in the development of a museum. Ongoing debates over which objects will be included in the museum, how they will be defined, how they will link to other sites of Jewish heritage around the city (through tours, performances, reference, etc.), as well as a hesitancy by many to donate family objects all point to issues around the construction of collective memory, communal cultural heritage, and multiple narratives of the past and how these are erased in the process of producing heritage as a series of museum objects. These debates also highlight concerns about how the contemporary community – which is multilingual, multinational, and multi-denominational – will be represented; in other words, who will be included in representations of the community and how will the contemporary community be defined, if at all? Finally, ongoing discussions around what will be emphasized or downplayed indicate the contested nature, not only of the past, but also of collective visions of the future as constituted through representations of heritage. In particular, negotiations over how to represent the Holocaust reflect a desire by some to fit the museum into developing narratives of cosmopolitanism, interfaith, and intercultural relations and a drive by others to represent family narratives and engage in a project ‘against forgetting’ in order to ensure a particular kind of future. And so, using this project as a case study, I seek to draw attention to the ways in which the construction of a heritage regime is at once a negotiation over narratives of the past, shared present identities, and collective visions of the future and the discourses and social processes at work within these debates. [less ▲]

XVII. ročník setkání historikù a příznivců orální historie na hradě Sovinci

in Marginalia Historica : Časopis pro Dějiny Vzdělanosti a Kultury (2019), 5(1), 245

Letošní ročník červnové konference v prostorách středověkého hradu Sovinec v Severomoravském kraji spojená s workshopem byla tradičně zaměřena na prezentaci právě probíhajících projektů realizovaných ... [more ▼]

Letošní ročník červnové konference v prostorách středověkého hradu Sovinec v Severomoravském kraji spojená s workshopem byla tradičně zaměřena na prezentaci právě probíhajících projektů realizovaných metodou orální historie. Účast na setkání byla podmíněna aktivním příspěvkem s délkou maximálně dvaceti minut. [less ▲]