ŽIDOVSKÉ MUZEUM V PRAZE Newsletter 4 2015 EXHIBITIONS The Missing Images: Eugeen Van Mieghem and the Jewish Emigrants to the New World Currently into its third month, the exhibition in the Robert Guttmann Galery is already the third exhibition of the Jewish Museum in Prague on the phenomenon of emigra- tion. It is devoted to the millions of inhabitants of Central and Eastern Europe who decided to leave for America between the end of the 19th and the first decades of the 20th centuries. The port of Antwerp was one of the main points of departure, and up until 1934 the Belgian Red Star Line, with its efficient network of sales agents in the region and attrac- tive pricing, alone transported ca. 2.4 million emigrants from Eastern Europe. Among them were hundreds of thousands Jews from Eastern Europe and Russia, who were fleeing poverty, oppression, and persecution. The first large-scale wave of Jewish emi- gration followed the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. Another wave followed the widespread Kishinev pogrom in 1903 and the failure of the democratic revolution of 1905 in Russia, which also sparked pogroms. Between 1881 and 1914, more than two and a half million Jews emigrated from Eastern Europe and Russia and another million left Europe from 1918 to 1939. The statistics show that over a fifty-year period nearly one-third of all Jewish inhabitants in Eastern Europe emigrated. The SS Vaderland and the emigrants at the Rijnkaai, ca. 1910, Van Mieghem Museum, Antwerp 1 This exodus was depicted by the painter Eugeen Van Mieghem (1875–1930), who was born and lived his whole life in Antwerp. Since the time of his youth he was in contact with the vibrant world of dockworkers, sailors, and East European emigrants who would become the lifelong subjects of his work. His life witnessed the greatest expansion of the Antwerp harbor and the massive waves of emigration to America. During the First World War, the inhabitants of occupied Belgium became the subject matter of his drawings. On show are 50 drawings and paintings by Van Mieghem as well as documentation about Red Star Line and period photographs of the Antwerp harbor. The exhibition was organized by the Jewish Museum in Prague in cooperation with the Eugeen Van Mieghem Foundation with support of the Red Star Line Museum in Antwerp, and is being held under the personal auspices of Her Excellency Françoise Gustin, the Ambas- sador of the Kingdom of Belgium to the Czech Republic. The exhibition will be open to the public until 10 April 2016. You are welcome to visit a guided tour of the exhibition by its curator Arno Paøík on Wednesday 24 February at 3 p.m. In Czech only. Regular admission CZK 40. Eugeen van Mieghem: Children waiting at The ancient Jewish community of Yemen the soup kitchen, ca. 1916, private collection, Antwerp An exhibition of photographs by Naftali Hilger will be on view in the Auditorium of the Jewish Museum’s Department for Education and Culture (Maiselova 15, Prague 1) from 15 January to 3 March. Open: Mon–Thu, 12–4 p.m., Fri 10 a.m. – 12 p.m., during evening programmes and by prior appointment. Jewish Customs and Traditions exhibition in Jihlava In November and December 2015, the Gustav Mahler House in Jihlava hosted the Jewish Museum’s touring exhibition Jewish Customs and Traditions. Items on loan from the Vysoèina Museum in Jihlava and the Municipal Museum of Polná were also on display there. The focus of the exhibition is on Jewish traditions, religion and history in Bohemia and Moravia. 2 Planned exhibition From May until September 2016, the Robert Guttmann Gallery will be hosting an exhi- bition entitled Castaways in Shanghai: The Hongkew Ghetto through the Lens of Arthur Rothstein, featuring scenes and images of the Hongkew Ghetto as depicted by the American photographer Arthur Rothstein (1915–1985) in April 1946: entrance to the ghetto in the Hongkew district, living quarters in Chaoufoong Street, a woman distribut- ing food rations from UNRRA, stateless children born into Jewish refugee families in China, a game of outdoor chess, a makeshift outdoor kitchen in an inner courtyard, soup with matzo dumplings prepared in a traditional Chinese pot, an evacuation notice-board, mail sorting, a group of people checking the latest lists of survivors from concentration camps in Europe... American photojournalist Arthur Rothstein. (Family archive photo) These documentary photographs from Shanghai later became famous after their publi- cation. Rothstein took them at the start of his assignment in China as chief photogra- pher for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), following his discharge from the military. His main task was to document the activity of this international organization, which at the time mainly involved distributing food aid and organizing the repatriation of Jewish refugees back to Europe. Rothstein’s documentary photographs captured the atmosphere of the Hongkew slum immediately after the war. Covering an area of about 2.5 square kilometres, the ghetto was set up by the Japanese occupation authorities as a designated area for European Jewish refugees who had arrived in Shanghai since 1937. In operation between 18 February 1943 and 14 August, it was liberated on 3 September 1945. A large number of European Jewish refugees were still in the ghetto at the time of its liberation, with as many as 20,000 having made their various ways there between 1938 and 1942. Against the backdrop of Rothstein’s photo reportage, the exhibition Castaways in Shanghai: The Hongkew Ghetto through the Lens of Arthur Rothstein aims to draw attention to the fate of the Czechoslovak nationals who formed a small but far from insignificant group in Shanghai. On the basis of various lists from 1942–1946, there are estimated to have been between 300 and 400 people in this group, about three quarters of whom were Jews. 3 Cultural events and lectures at the Jewish Museum On 1 October, the Maisel Synagogue hosted a concert by the Anèerl Quartet – Lukáš Novotný and Martin Balda (violin), Vanda Kubíková (viola), Daniel Petrásek (cello) – with performances of Janáèek’s String Quartet No. 1 (“The Kreutzer Sonata”), Viktor Ullmann’s String Quartet No. 3 and Dvoøák’s String Quartet No. 3 in D Major. The Anèerl Quartet On 6 November, the Jewish Museum’s Department for Education and Culture hosted the third in a series of seminars on refugees – entitled The Orient in Bohemia? – with the support of the Heinrich Böll Foundation. As with the previous two, the seminar was attended by more than 40 teachers. Papers were given on Czech Jewish refugees in Denmark (by Dana Schmidt) and Switzerland (by Helena Kanyar Becker) and on pres- ent-day refugees (by Vìra Roubalová). The participants were also introduced to the Jewish Museum’s new education programme Adventurers Against their Will (by Jan Wittenberg), which is based on the letters of Czech Jewish emigrants. In addition, they went to see the Lost Images exhibition at the Robert Guttmann Gallery with the curator Arno Paøík. They also met Dr. Al Rajab, a refugee from Syria with whom they discussed questions relating to current migration. Judging by the solely positive responses from the participants, this kind of seminar enables them to become more oriented in the given topic. Moreover, what the teachers learn here is often later included in their lessons. Vìra Roubalová with teachers at the “Orient in Bohemia?” seminar 4 On 23 November, the Maisel Synagogue hosted an author reading by the writer Ivan Kraus and his brother, the famous actor and popular TV host Jan Kraus. This was a unique event with a special atmosphere and was much appreciated by the packed audience. Literary evening with the Kraus brothers On 15 December, the Jewish Museum’s Department for Education and Culture hosted a lecture entitled Gottfried Bloch: A Psychoanalyst Recollects the Holocaust. The lecture was given by Martin Mahler, Vice President of the Czech Psychoanalytical Society and President of the Rafael Institute. Last year saw the publication of a Czech translation of the memoirs of Dr. Gottfried Bloch (1914–2008), a Czech-born psychoanalyst and Holocaust survivor who had faded into oblivion for about half a century. This book is remarkable not only for the author’s personal story, but also for the unusual account of the Holocaust experience from the perspective of a psychoanalyst. Based on its level of reflection on the Holocaust experience, this book belongs to the same category as works by Primo Levi, Bruno Bettelheim and Viktor Frankl. The lecture on the life and work of Gottfried Bloch was accompanied by a documentary film about this psychoana- lyst and humanist. Martin Mahler speaking about Gottfried Bloch A day later, the eleventh discussion evening in the Spirituality Dialogue project took place in the Maisel Synagogue. The topic of “secular society and spiritual life” was explored by Karol Efraim Sidon, Chief Rabbi of the Czech Republic, and Marek O. Vácha, a Roman Catholic priest and head of the Ethics Institute at the Third Medical Faculty of Charles University. Many of the positive aspects of secular society pose 5 burning questions for religion. For example, does secularization weaken or benefit spiritual life? What place does religion actually have in a secular society and what is the place of secularism in spiritual life? The guests spoke about these and many other issues with Miloš Hrdý, one of the initiators of the Spirituality Dialogue project. (from left): Miloš Hrdý, Karol Efraim Sidon and Marek O. Vácha The autumn months saw the continuation of the popular Our Twentieth Century series, sub-headed “A View from the Other Side”.