project NEIGHBOURS WHO DISAPPEARED

"Neighbours Who Disappeared" Project
(started in 1999 under the auspices of the Office of the president Vaclav Havel)

The Education and Culture Center of the Jewish Museum in Prague (ECC JMP) in collaboration with its project partner Forgotten NGO, with a support of the Terezín Memorial, Hidden Child, Czech Federation of Jewish Communities, invite anyone interested to participate in a unique project called "Neighbours Who Disappeared". This project is a social phenomenon of the Czech Republic. In the light of strong assimilation of the Jewish population till 1939 and following radical change and in the shade of the period 1945-1989, which did not care of the gradual devastation of historic sights and religious life, the path on vanishing traces of local Jewish settlement might for young people become a find of special context.
1. The goal of the project NWD is to help students 12-21 years old to formulate questions, which relate to the fate of the people who have disappeared during the 2nd World War in their neighborhood. Students are doing research into local and state archives, in Terezin Memorial and other related organizations, oral history with witnesses and survivors. Then they are preparing brochures or collection with family photos and documents, often as a first research about Jewish Community life in their town. Since 2002 is the individual effort of students multiplied by following activities of local Jewish communities and Non-Governmental organizations. The outputs are research studies and essays saving local photos and documentation, often important for databases, archives and scholars and the exhibition Neighbours Who Disappeared (12 panels) accompanied by the catalogue.

2. The II. stage of the project called A Tribute to the Child Holocaust Victims addresses again young people aged 12 -21 and proposes that they work independently on the stories of people who lived with their neighbors in a harmony until WWII and who were then mostly marked, restricted, persecuted, and finally liquidated. This project's topic, however, is in the first place the life of the children and youngsters in the same community where children - participants live today. The output is a digital tablet permanently placed in each participated school accompanied by web-sites, brochures and volumes presented as a report about students research work. These outputs are based on the students long-time-self learning project and common local activities (schools-archives-libraries and cultural centers- families-municipalities).
Copy of that in English is a part of a national traveling exhibition (in October 2005 there is 7 posters 80 x 200 cm) each from different locality accompanied by common catalogue and later on by individual brochures (supported by each school and local municipalities).

Supervisor and coordinator:
The Education and Culture Centre of the Jewish Museum in Prague, Maiselova 15, Prague 1, 110 00, Czech Republic
phone: +420 222 325 172, +420 224 814 926 Marie Zahradníková
fax: +420 222 318 856, marie.zahr@jewishmuseum.cz

Methodologist and coordinator:
Marta Vančurová (martavan@gmail.com ), mobile: +420 603 147 074

S u m m a r y:

Zuzana Krizova
Stříbro, High School

I do not have any ancestors of Jewish origin. But my grandmother told me she had had a Jewish girlfriend.
Her name was Eva. They attended the same class and were inseparable friends. When according to the law 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. What's more, most of my grandmother's classmates have daughters of the same name. All of them named their daughters in honour of her so that she could live on with them.

Junior High School and Public School of Arts in Husova Street, Usti nad Labem
We thought this work would help us to find responses to our questions. The contrary is true. The more we learned, the more other questions appeared. I feel that it is impossible to find the answer to the cardinal question - how could it happen? In spite of this we will keep asking.
…We particularly wanted to publish memories of the people whose lives were changed by the war and the Holocaust. We had the opportunity to meet Mrs. Viera Siladinova who survived Auschwitz. On the Internet we were in touch with Mrs. Rachel Isserow who, together with her family, left Usti nad Labem for Izrael. We had a chance to have a look at the authentic diary notes of our classmate's great-grandfather and get acquainted with the memories of our two classmates' grandmothers.
(Vratislav Drobecek, 8.B student)

My story is about me, Zuzana Elbertova (High School Pripotocni, Prague 10)
Only recently my father learnt from my grandfather's friends that he comes from a Jewish family. Unfortunately this information is fragmentary, only assembled from several preserved documents, as this topic has been taboo in my father's family until recently. My grandfather is not alive and my grandmother is scarred from the past, she has never spoken about it as she does not want to be reminded of it any more.

Pupils of Velhartice Elementary and Junior High School
We have a small girls' group in Velhartice and when we were offered the project Neighbours Who Disappeared by the basic school I asked the girls if they wanted to set about dealing with it. They did and so we set off to follow the traces of the neighbors who disappeared.
Why did we choose Lili's story? When Lili was leaving for Prague she was as old as the girls. We also enjoyed the narration of Alena's grandmother. I think it is important for the girls to consider that children of the same age had totally different worries, that their fate was hard and came unfortunately to such a tragic end.
Ivona Synáčová, leader of the Girls Christian Group

Junior High School in Lostice - Last Fates of the Jewish Community in Loštice
In the publication on the history of Lostice published by the municipal authority in 1999 the report on the Morgensterns is missing. Five Morgenstern children and their father Richard Morgenstern belong to the saved Eckstein family, too. The children are alive and they are the only first-hand witnesses to the Lostice Holocaust.
Among plenty of offers arriving at our school this one was different. Three girls in the highest level (Veronika Naplavova, Nina Koudelkova, Terezie Tatounova) responded to it quite spontaneously. It made me very happy, as I myself would not dare to take part.
(Frantisek Kobza - teacher at Lostice Junior High School)

Six testimonies on those who disappeared - Mašťov (Kadaň)
Petr Vesely, High School Kadan
The Fantl family lived in a small house, number 134, near the synagogue. The house was beneath the chateaux close to the Zamecka alley. Heinrich and Julia Fantl had five children: Richard, Ernst, Josef, Helena and Frieda.
The only one who survived and also got back to Mastov was Richard. He survived the concentration camps only thanks to - as he later remembered - the fact that in the camp he led a pony pulling a cart and shared oats with the horse. In the summer of 1945 he returned to his native town Mastov with broken health. He was 26. After six years of concentration camp, cold and starvation he suffered from advanced tuberculosis. Mrs Fantl came from a mixed marriage as her father was Czech and her mother was German. She had known Richard since their school years and he always used to joke he would marry her one day. He kept his word. She already had her luggage packed and was waiting to be transferred to Germany with her family. She spent six weeks in Podborany where all Germans were concentrated before the transfer. Richard came for her and later they got married.

Martin Fencl, High School Porg, Prague 8
(The Jewish Settlement in Liteň, Mořina and Beroun)
Thanks to the project "Neighbours Who Disappeared" I have created totally my own work, which I would probably never have made up my mind to do by myself. Unlike the works that one carries out by collecting pieces of second-hand information from books, I, in my work, only wrote about what I saw with my own eyes. I have made something of my own.

Students in High School in Ostrava - Hrabuvka - Ostrava
We got involved in this project because people have been gradually forgetting how World War II changed people's lives, mostly Jewish. Many of them died and to those who were lucky and survived, the nightmares will evoke memories of the horrors that were committed on them. Today's generation, without any knowledge what it is all about, only laughs at it. That is why we think that this project can help them to understand.
In 1899 there was the first Jewish gymnastics club in Czech lands called Bar Kochba, in 1924 renamed ZKS Makkabi. Jan Mayer was a member as well - in the photo of the Makkabi Games 1931.
The Fates of the Šumperk Jewish Families
Martina Polisenska and Vera Skubalova, Zabreh na Morave, High School
I have never been interested in the Jews before. The project "Neighbours Who Disappeared" came at the time when I, within the framework of a school film screening, had to see Steven Spilberg's film Schindler's List. After the film sequence when human ashes are falling onto a small town I was overcome with terror and hate of human cruelty that caused the death of many people. Maybe that is why my friend and I set out to search for the fate of the Jewish families in Sumperk.

Lipník nad Bečvou - Mr Steiner tells the students of Lipnik High School:
"Hard it is to express the feelings of a man who is a native of Lipnik nad Becvou, and also a former student of Lipnik secondary school, who went through Terezin, Auschwitz, Buchenwald Aussenkomando HASSAG, Werk Meuselwitz and the march of death - and who is standing in a classroom of Lipnik grammar school in front of dozens of young people as young as he was when he was deported and who due to this lost his home, his family and his friends as well." Various thoughts are on my mind. "Am I able to tell them anything at all? Will they be asking, will they be interested in the narration of an elderly gentleman? Do they know who their "Neighbours Who Disappeared" were?" With this group of students I spent two unforgettable hours then. They were great, each of their questions radiated a deep interest in the topic. Soon it was clear that I had a well-informed and knowledgeable audience in front of me. After finishing the talk I got a beautiful present in remembrance - a ceramic model of the synagogue in Lipnik that competes with Prague's Old-New Synagogue both in style and antiquity. The model of the synagogue, where I - in front of the whole Jewish community - sang my part of the Torah at my Bar micva. That was the last year and the last month when about 150 Lipnik Jews lived as free people in democratic Czechoslovakia. In fact, of the entire family - I counted there were about 34 of us - only two of us came back, that is my father and I. More than two hundred people left Lipnik and only seven of them returned in total. Those were two of us, coming directly from a concentration camp, then two mixed marriages, whose Jewish members were deported at the end of the war, and then one man of the same age arrived with the allied army. Much later Frantisek Sin returned, now living somewhere in the USA. So this would be the whole "final balance".

Sokolov - Michal Vessel, High School in Sokolov
The subject "Jewish settlement within the Sokolov region" had never been specifically examined. Therefore I was able to try to fill in a blank space in the history of our region. One could say that the project "Neighbours Who Disappeared" became a part of my life for one year. For the whole period I tried - anywhere it was possible - to collect data, documents, photographs and in fact anything somehow connected with this subject. But all the time I met a total lack of any data available. The documents of highest value, that is the records of Jewish communities within the Sokolov area, have been irretrievably damaged. I have made my own photographs of Jewish sites of our region and recorded the epitaphs on the tombstones if legible. Leo Hoenig's chronicle considerably extended my work. (Synagogue destroyed in "Crystal night"1938)