January 31, 2007
Finding the vanished'Neighbours Who Disappeared' at Czech Embassy

by Aaron Leibel
Arts Editor


My grandmother told me she had a Jewish girlfriend."

"Her name was Eva. They attended the same class and were inseparable friends. When according to the law [after the Nazi conquest in 1939] Eva had to leave the school, my grandmother risked her life and visited her secretly. She taught her what Eva missed at school and at night they used to go for walks. Then Eva was transported to Terezin and was killed together with her mother. "When my grandmother had a baby girl, she did not think twice about naming the child after her friend ... Eva." That story, researched and told by Zuzana Krizova of the Grammar School in the Czech town of Stribo, is one of dozens in the exhibit Neighbours Who Disappeared at the Embassy of the Czech Republic in the District until Feb. 15. The Jewish Museum of Prague initiated the project by the same name in which Czech children did research to learn about Jews who had lived in their towns prior to the pre-World War II conquest by the Nazis. Marta Vancurova of the museum's Education and Culture Centre conceived the project, says Marie Zahradnikova, who also works at the museum and is the exhibit's curator. There was little teaching about the Holocaust prior to this project, the curator explains.

Some 120,000 Jews lived in Czech lands before the war; today, there are only about 6,000 Jews living in the Czech Republic. Vancurova's "idea was not only to give lectures and teach about the Holocaust, but give a chance to the schools, pupils, students to do research and search for information by themselves," Zahradnikova says. This project is part of the process of change that the Czech Republic's educational system has been undergoing since the country's 1989 revolution, she says, which saw the end of indirect Soviet rule. Part of the new reality has to do with embracing "multiculturalism," she explains. In the Czech Republic, "Jews and Judaism are part of this multiculturalism," and therefore, this ongoing project fits in. It began six years ago with youngsters aged 12-18 taking part.

The research came home in a very personal way to some of the young people, who were surprised to learn that they had Jewish ancestors, says Zahradnikova. "They didn't know it, it was very interesting [for them]," she says.

Others youngsters discovered that although there were no Jews currently living in their towns, Jewish kids had studied at their school before the war. Then, the project's posters, which were placed in those schools, became memorials.

"It says to the school that, today, there are some children, a group of students, that researched the history of the school, and they discovered that many students [at their school] before the war were Jewish," says the curator. "This is very interesting for the whole school" to learn that fact. "It is part of the history of the school."

The exhibit at the embassy consists of 19 panels with photos and narratives dealing both with the Czech researchers and the Jewish subjects they were investigating. Seven of those panels come from "Phase II" of the project, "A Tribute to the Child Holocaust Victims." (The first 12 panels were designed by the Jewish museum, but the youngsters themselves designed the "Tribute" panels.) So far, the project, which is ongoing, has produced exhibitions, a Web site (www.zmizeli-sousede.cz/ajindex.html), brochures, collections of papers and video documentation. The exhibit, which was at Temple Rodef Shalom in Falls Church in April, will be in Clark University in Massachusetts and then in Washington State University after it leaves the embassy. Neighbours Who Disappeared can be viewed by appointment Mondays through Thursdays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., and Fridays, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Call 202-274-9105 for an appointment.