“Traces of Memory” Opens April 19 at JCC’s Bronfman Gallery

• What: “Traces of Memory” photography exhibition.
• When: Opening reception, Yom Hashoah, April 19, 6 to 8 pm. Event and exhibition are free. Presentation at 7 pm. Exhibition runs to May 21.
• Where: Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery, Washington DC Jewish Community Center, 16th and Q Streets NW.
• More Information: Alissa Perman at alissap[AT]washingtondcjcc.org or 202-777-3260.

Featured image: Tablets at the remains of a synagogue in Polish Galicia (courtesy of Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery).

To mark Yom Hashoah – Holocaust Remembrance Day – the legacy of those lost will be remembered in a photographic exhibition, “Traces of Memory,” at the DC Jewish Community Center’s Ann Loeb Bronfman Gallery.

The exhibition pieces together the relics of Jewish life and culture in Polish Galicia, a region in Eastern Europe that straddles present-day Poland and Ukraine. It is designed to give visitors a brief glimpse into history — and to provoke them to reflect on the how and why of this lost community, according to the Bronfman Gallery.

Over a period of 12 years, the late British photojournalist Chris Schwarz and professor Jonathan Weber, UNESCO Chair of Jewish and Interfaith Studies, University of Birmingham, England, worked together to gather photos and texts that offer a completely new way of looking at the Jewish past that was destroyed in Poland.

Dzielski will join Shana Penn, executive director of the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture, Jakub Nowakowski, director of the Galicia Jewish Museum, and Chuck Weiss, uncle of the late photojournalist Chris Schwarz in offering remarks  in honor of the opening of the exhibition at 7 p.m during the April 19 opening

The exhibition is divided into five sections, corresponding to different approaches to the subject matter:

1. Section one, “Jewish Life in Ruins”
2. Section two, “Jewish Culture as it Once Was”
3. Section three, “Sites of Massacre and Destruction”
4. Section four, “How the Past is Being Remembered”
5. Section five, “People Making Memory Today”

“Traces of Memory” is on loan from the Galicia Jewish Museum with support from the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture and is co-sponsored by the Embassy of the Republic of Poland.

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