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Golgotha in paradise: memory and martyrdom in a former Polish shtetl
Author(s): Weizman, Yechiel
Date: 2026
Topics: Holocaust: Collaboration, Holocaust Commemoration, Ethnography, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Memory, Rural and Small Town (inc former shtetls)
Abstract: This article examines how local complicity in the Holocaust is negotiated, silenced, and revealed through the spatial memoryscape of Rajgród, a small town in northeastern Poland where Poles participated in the murder of their Jewish neighbors in the summer of 1941. Using a microhistorical lens, it analyzes how knowledge, denial, and memory are inscribed in physical spaces and communal practices, rendering space a cultural text. Drawing on personal and municipal records and ethnographic fieldwork, the article shows how Catholicism, nationalism, and ritual symbolism shape collective remembrance and moral hierarchies of suffering in post-socialist Eastern Europe.
Can preservation Bring Back the Genius Loci? Creating a Jewish Place in a Town with no Jews
Author(s): Stieglitz, Orit
Editor(s): Kępczyńska-Walczak, Anetta
Date: 2015
Topics: Jewish Heritage, Main Topic: Culture and Heritage, Rural and Small Town
Abstract: The paper discusses the restoration and preservation of a Jewish Heritage site in a small town in Slovakia. The Jewish Suburbia of Bardejov, a spiritual complex with tremendous historical, architectural and urbanistic values has been neglected and misused since the disappearance of the town’s Jewish community during WWII. The question that the paper addresses is whether architectural preservation can bring back the historic cultural meaning and reinstate the spirit of place, the genius loci, without the people who occupied it - those who previously used the space and created its role and significance.
UNESCO heritage, remembrance, and contemporary identity: festivities of Jewish culture in small towns in the Czech Republic
Author(s): Skořepová, Zita
Date: 2025
Topics: Jewish Heritage, Jewish Culture, Main Topic: Culture and Heritage, Rural and Small Town (inc former shtetls), Theatre
Abstract: Třebíč is the only Czech town, but one of several in the world, to have its Jewish quarter separately listed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. For more than twenty years, this small town has held not one but two events related to Jewish culture: Shamayim Jewish Culture Festival and Jewish Town Revived, a cultural and historical festivity. Based on long-term and repeated fieldwork from 2017 to the present, the article explains how the acquisition of the UNESCO World Heritage status of the local Jewish quarter determined the reinterpretation and appropriation of the tangible monuments and immaterial references to Jewish culture from a more or less tolerated and dilapidated relic of the past into an essential and prestigious identity marker of today’s completely non-Jewish Třebíč. What elements other than Jewish material cultural heritage do the Třebíč festivities refer to, and how do today’s music/dance/theatre performers – who are overwhelmingly non-Jewish – present them? How do the festivities relate to the local Jewish past and where are the limits of imagination and reference to historical realia? What other purposes do the festivities serve today and how do they affect the revitalization of the quarter?
Remembering Jews in Poland: the encounter between Warsaw’ s POLIN Museum and rural memories of Jewish absence – divergent aims and needs
Author(s): Kubica, Aleksandra; Van de Putte, Thomas
Date: 2019
Topics: Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust, Holocaust Memorials, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Memory, Museums, Rural and Small Town
Abstract: The POLIN Museum runs a traveling exhibition (Museum on Wheels) which has visited places in rural Poland since 2014. The exhibition’s aim is to teach about ‘the centuries of coexistence of Jewish and Polish culture.’ The Holocaust is one of the elements presented but is not central. Our content and lexicometric analysis of interviews with visitors from five towns visited by MoW in 2015 and 2016 indicates that the needs articulated by visitors differed from POLIN’s agenda. We show that the Holocaust and Jewish absence in the rural Poland of the present were the most prominent topics appearing, not the continuity of Jewish life and culture. Although it was not its central aim, the three days visit of MoW has created opportunities for local communities to address the void left after the Holocaust. For our analysis, we traced the museum’s discourse on the one hand and the ‘discourse of absence’ of the visitors on the other hand on the basis of keywords. From these two sets of keywords, we quantitatively mapped the prominence of both discourse and combined it with a more qualitative content analysis of specific segments of the interviews of which our corpus is composed.
The Sound of Change Performing ‘Jewishness’ in Small Polish Towns
Author(s): Shapiro, Eleanor
Date: 2020
Topics: Jewish Music, Main Topic: Culture and Heritage, Klezmer, Jewish Heritage, Jewish Culture, Rural and Small Town (inc former shtetls)
Upamiętnianie Żydow w krajobrazie kulturowym Bobowej : "Przepracowanie pamięci"?
Translated Title: Commemorating Jews in the cultural landscape of Bobowa: "Working through memory"?
Author(s): Duch-Dyngosz, Marta
Editor(s): Kucia, Marek
Date: 2011
Topics: Main Topic: Culture and Heritage, Memory, Jewish Heritage, Educational Tours, Hassidim, Rural and Small Town, Tourism
Abstract: W artykule podjęto problematykę upamiętniania Żydów we współczesnej Polsce, w dawnych sztetlach, na przykładzie miejscowości Bobowa w Małopolsce - niegdysiejszego centrum chasydyzmu i miejsca współczesnych odwiedzin Żydów, w tym pielgrzymek chasydów. W części teoretycznej zostały wprowadzone najważniejsze pojęcia socjologicznej teorii pamięci. W części empirycznej przedstawiono wyniki własnych zogniskowanych wywiadów grupowych przeprowadzonych w 2010 roku z liderami i zwykłymi członkami społeczności Bobowej. W artykule zanalizowano sposoby i rezultaty upamiętniania przedwojennej społeczności żydowskiej przez współczesnych mieszkańców Bobowej, nie-Żydów, w lokalnym krajobrazie pamięci, w kontekście stosunków polsko-żydowskich przed, podczas i tuż po II wojnie światowej. Przeprowadzone badania i analizy pozwalają stwierdzić, że jak dotąd w Bobowiej nie nastąpiło Ricoeurowskie "przepracowanie pamięci" o Żydach przez współczesnych mieszkańców.
Разрыв Еврейской Традиции И Его Преодоление В Постсоветской Украине
Translated Title: Jewish Tradition in Post-Soviet Ukraine: Lost and Regained
Author(s): Евсеенко, Наталья
Date: 2011
Topics: Jewish Identity, Main Topic: Identity and Community, Jewish Community, Jewish Renewal, Jewish Revival, Post-1989, Age and Generational Issues, Rural and Small Town (inc former shtetls)
Abstract: The paper is focused on the problem of relationship to one’s own religious tradition. Here one can find preliminary analysis of field materials gathered in small Ukrainian town Balta - former Jewish shtetl, a small town with a large Jewish population. Nowadays the Balta Jews are facing the revival of their religious life and are actively participating in this process. Our aim was to analyze how different generations of Balta Jews see their own religious experience. We found out that the elderly people tended to consider contemporary religious revival as a direct continuation of their parents’ and grandparents’ traditions as they remember it since the time they used to be children. On the contrary, the middle generation of Balta Jews believe that they are in a way victims of a «tradition gap»; they tend to blame the Soviet state for depriving them of any opportunity to live a full Jewish life. The middle generation sees the pre-Holocaust tradition as a «lost paradise» which never comes back. And, finally, the young Balta Jews express no relation to the previous stages of Jewish life in their town, but they are obviously proud of their Jewishness because they understand and use it as a resource for getting a good education in different Jewish high schools and as a possibility to emigrate from Ukraine.
Remembering Southern Germany’s Jewish past – initiatives and developments since the 1980’s
Author(s): Renghart, Martin
Date: 2017
Topics: Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Memorial, Jewish Museums, Holocaust Memorials, Rural and Small Town
Abstract: The following article tries to give an overview of the memorial work and the preservation of Jewish heritage in Southern Germany, mainly in its rural regions, since the 1980s. Theere exist around 20 memorials in in the State of Baden-Württemberg and about the same number in Bavaria. Varying in size and ambition, many of them are housed in former synagogues or other buildings formerly in Jewish ownership. They are concentrated in the North of Bavaria, in the regions of Upper, Central and Lower Franconia and in
the North of Baden-Württemberg, where from the 17th century till the 1930s many Jewish communities existed. What were
the reasons for the sudden rise of interest in local Jewish history? What is on display? What were the main intentions of the initiators, and what have they achieved? What form of resistance, conflicts and criticisms occurred?
Niche tourism in small peripheral towns: the case of Jewish Heritage in Belmonte, Portugal
Author(s): Dinis, Anabela; Krakover, Shaul
Date: 2016
Topics: Main Topic: Culture and Heritage, Jewish Heritage, Tourism, Rural and Small Town (inc former shtetls)
Abstract: This paper explores the potential contribution of niche products to the development of sustainable tourism in small peripheral places. The exploration is conducted on the case study of Belmonte, a small peripheral Portuguese town, employing a strategy of niche tourism in the framework of “museum park” development. This park is comprised of different sorts of local heritage, including the town's unique Jewish history. Empirical research was conducted using an inductive methodology based on several primary and secondary sources of data. Results indicate that Jewish heritage tourism is an important and growing segment of tourism, though it does not constitute, as of yet, the sole engine of local development. Jewish heritage tourism faces the challenge of developing supportive services to sustain the growing demand and allow retaining more value in the region. It is concluded that in remote peripheral areas: (a) Niche tourism should be developed as a cluster of products; (b) Jewish heritage appears as a viable niche product within the framework of the museum parks cluster; (c) The involvement of local government is crucial for the success of tourism development; and (d) Sustainability of niche tourism products depend on joining local and global distributional networks.
Who Are These "Mountain Jews"?
Author(s): Chelnov, Mikhail A.
Date: 2009
Topics: Main Topic: Identity and Community, Jewish Community, Mountain Jews, Rural and Small Town, Diaspora
Abstract: Mikhail Chlenov, secretary general of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, introduces the classic volume Mountain Jews, edited by Iosef Begun and Valerii Dymshits. This essay presents the significance of the group as well as the book. Mountain or "Highland" Jews have cultural roots in the history of a far-flung Persian Jewish archipelago. Many Jews from mountainous villages in Dagestan and Azerbaijan in the post-Soviet period have fled long-established rural communities, often landing in Moscow as outsiders within an already "outsider" group.
In the Shadow of the Shtetl: Small-Town Jewish Life in Soviet Ukraine
Author(s): Veidlinger, Jeffrey
Date: 2013
Topics: Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Oral History and Biography, Interviews, Holocaust Survivors, Ageing and the Elderly, Memory, Rural and Small Town
Abstract: The story of how the Holocaust decimated Jewish life in the shtetls of Eastern Europe is well known. Still, thousands of Jews in these small towns survived the war and returned afterward to rebuild their communities. The recollections of some 400 returnees in Ukraine provide the basis for Jeffrey Veidlinger’s reappraisal of the traditional narrative of 20th-century Jewish history. These elderly Yiddish speakers relate their memories of Jewish life in the prewar shtetl, their stories of survival during the Holocaust, and their experiences living as Jews under Communism. Despite Stalinist repressions, the Holocaust, and official antisemitism, their individual remembrances of family life, religious observance, education, and work testify to the survival of Jewish life in the shadow of the shtetl to this day.
Ordnung und Angst.Russische Juden aus der Sicht eines ostdeutschen Dorfes nach der Wende. Eine ethnologische Studie
Translated Title: Order and Anxiety. Russian Jews from the perspective of an East German village after the turn. An ethnological study
Author(s): Spülbeck, Susanne
Date: 2013
Topics: Ethnography, Anthropology, Immigration, Russian-Speaking Jews, Rural and Small Town, Main Topic: Identity and Community
Abstract: Siebzig russische Juden werden ab Oktober 1990 in einem Ort der soeben aufgelösten DDR untergebracht. Wie reagieren die Einheimischen? Mit dieser Frage erforschte eine deutsche Ethnologin über anderthalb Jahre ein deutsches Dorf. Susanne Spülbeck legt hier die erste sozialwissenschaftliche Studie über die Situation nach der Wende in Ostdeutschland vor, die auf der ständigen Teilnahme der Forscherin am Alltag basiert. So ist sie Pionierin, Grenzgängerin, die sich in einer Zwischen-Welt aufhält und zu orientieren sucht. Ein solcher Aufenthaltsort birgt einige Überraschungen, für die Forscherin, aber auch für den Leser. Ihre Studie zeigt: Fremdenfurcht und Ausländerfeindlichkeit lassen sich hier erst im Kontext der subtilen Auswirkungen staatlicher Überwachung verstehen.
The Incorporation of a Stranger: Analysis of a Social Situation in a Welsh Valley
Author(s): Mars, Leonard
Date: 1994
Topics: Ethnography, Ritual, Small Jewish Communities, Rural and Small Town, Main Topic: Other
Pilgrimages in Jewish Folk Religion in Hungary - from the Chassidic Courts to the Virtual Communities
Author(s): Glässer, Norbert
Date: 2006
Topics: Hassidim, Haredi / Strictly Orthodox Jews, Pilgrimage, Memorial, Folklore, Tourism, Main Topic: Culture and Heritage, Rural and Small Town (inc former shtetls)
Abstract: The Jewish pilgrimages in Hungary belong in the context of expansion of the 18th century Chassidic movement of the Ashkenazic Jews of Poland. The differing forms are connected to the charismatic figures of the communities, to the so-called righteous men. Pilgrims visited them at the time of individual crises or at major feasts. The news of their travels attracted thousands of pilgrims. This pilgrimage could be repeated for their funeral and on the anniversaries of their death. Places of pilgrimage with very large areas of attraction arose. Societies and Talmudic schools were often associated with these persons, which became the germs for the organisation of virtual communities forming again after the Holocaust. Today these graves are important mnemotechnical places for the Chassidic virtual communities, and the pilgrimages are mnemotechnical occasions and compensatory rites. They can provide new knowledge for history of mentality studies of the religious practice of rural Jewry, and for research on sacral communication, the organisation of virtual communities and on pilgrimages.
There Are No Jews Here: From a Multiethnic to a Monoethnic Town of Burshtyn
Author(s): Amosova, Sventlana
Date: 2011
Topics: Memory, Oral History and Biography, Attitudes to Jews, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Rural and Small Town (inc former shtetls)
Abstract: This paper is devoted to the preservation and transformation of historical memory about the Jewish population of Galicia among Ukrainians and explores how memory about Jews functions in the town of Burshtyn, although Jews have not lived there for over seventy years. The study is based on 20 in-depth interviews that were conducted in 2009-2010. The subjects, ethnic Ukrainians born before World War II, were eyewitnesses of the Jewish life that once flourished in the town. The interviews targeted three major themes: (1) life stories of Jewish families, (2) religious life, (3) Jewish calendar rites and rites of passage.
Today, Burshtyn is one of two towns in Galicia, where memories about the Jewish population are still preserved albeit in a fragmented form. Pierre Nora coined the term «un lieu de mémoire», a place of memory. The “Jewish local text” in Burshtyn is a case in point. The source of memories is symbolic spaces in the townscape – the cemetery and the synagogues. The “text about Jews” has survived only among those people, who lived in the town before the war and among their descendents and, what is particularly significant, only in the old part of the town, where Jews had lived. The case of Burshtyn enables us to observe a transformation of a polyethnic town into a monoethnic one at the level of “local memory.” Notably, the transmission “vehicle” of information about Jewish life is town toponymics: the informants describe some places as “Jewish”.
Juifs des villes, juifs des champs
Translated Title: Jews of the citiy, Jews of the countryside
Author(s): Azria, Régine
Date: 1998
Topics: Cities and Suburbs, Rural and Small Town, Affiliation and Belonging, Main Topic: Other
Why Don't They Participate? A Short Voyage into the Hearts, Minds and Concerns of the Jews of Subotica, Yugoslavia
Translated Title: ה"נעדרים": מסע קצר של התוודעות אל יהודי סובוטיקה, יוגוסלביה
Author(s): Stojkovic, Sara
Date: 2007
Topics: Interviews, Jewish Community, Memory, Main Topic: Identity and Community, Rural and Small Town (inc former shtetls)
Abstract: This field report provides us with a poignant account of the current condition of Jewish life in the author's home-town, Subotica, set against the story of the community over the course of the 20th century. The integration of interviews with community members together with Ms. Stojkovi?'s own personal insights and recollections create a fascinating window into the community’s situation, dilemmas, hopes and prospects. While this report deals with one small, specific locale, it has broader implications; as she writes: "Set in a unique historical and geographical environment, I believe that the Jewish community of Subotica tells a story common to many other post-socialist settings, especially the ones placed in the realm of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire".