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At the Tip of Your Fingers
CLEANING OF STOLPERSTEIN ON THE OCCASION OF THE 80TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE LIBERATION OF THE
AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU CONCENTRATION CAMP AND
INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY
80 years ago, on 27 January 1945, the German concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated after years of brutal mass murders of Jews, Sinti and Roma, LGBT people, people with disabilities and many others. Today, we remember the millions of individuals who fell victim to the horrors of the Holocaust and the brutal crimes of Nazi Germany.
This day is a reminder that we must never forget the victims of the Holocaust. It reminds us that we must stand united and work to ensure that it never happens again. We must protect human rights, defend our democracy and resist all forms of anti-Semitism, hatred and fascism.
On 27 January 2025, the embassies of Germany, Great Britain, the USA, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Romania, Ireland, Austria, Italy, Poland and Kosovo joined the action of cleaning the Stolpersteine around Ljubljana, which was initiated by the Jewish Cultural Centre Ljubljana.
Since 2018 and in cooperation with The Municipality of Ljubljana, we have led a project which places commemorative markings intended to preserve the memory of victims of the holocaust and individuals targeted by the Nazi regime, including Jews, Roma, political prisoners, disabled individuals, LGBTQ+ people, and others. Initiated by German artist Günter Demnig, the so-called stumbling stones or “Stolpersteine” are small, brass-plated cobblestones embedded in sidewalks or streets in front of buildings where victims of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution lived, worked, or were deported.
We would like to thank all embassies for their participation.
HANUKKAH CELEBRATION, EXHIBITION OPENING AND CONCERT AS PART OF THE TRAST PROJECT
Photo: Ivan Waltl
On December 30, 2024, Jewish Cultural Center Ljubljana and Mini Teater organized a traditional candle lighting ceremony at Križevniška street for the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, led by the director Robert Waltl and Rabbi Alexander Grodensky from Luxembourg. The event was attended by members of the Jewish community, numerous representatives of the diplomatic corps, foreign cultural centers, and representatives of other religions, highlighting the importance of intercultural connection and respect.
After the candle lighting, the invited guests visited the Jewish Cultural Center, for the opening of the exhibition of photographic portraits of members of the Slovenian Jewish community and their supporters. The author of the photographs in the exhibition is photographer Igor Huzbašić, and the exhibition was created as part of the European project TRAST – transmedia stories about isolation.
After the exhibition, we also organized a concert by the internationally recognized musician from Amsterdam, Nani Vazana, in the Mini teater hall as part of the European project TRAST. With her voice and interpretation of Ladino music, the language of Sephardic Jews, Nani Vazana created a magical evening filled with historical stories of love, sorrow, and hope. Ladino, an ancient language blending Spanish, Hebrew, and other languages, was the perfect choice for preserving and revitalizing the rich musical heritage of Sephardic tradition.
After the concert, a conversation followed, offering an in-depth insight into Jewish heritage, with an emphasis on the importance of preserving and sharing different cultural traditions.
Visitors also enjoyed in the selection of the Jewish Cuisine.
ROBERT WALTL IS THE FIRST RECIPIENT OF
THE ROMANIAN NATIONAL PRIZE
The jury of the "Ambassador Mihnea Constantinescu" National Prize, awarded by the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for special merits in fighting anti-Semitism, xenophobia, radicalization and hate speech, has decided, upon consensus, to confer the 2024 prize to Robert Waltl.
The jury valued the innovative nature of Robert Waltl's work, the long-term impact of his activities, the substantial civic commitment and the remarkable contribution to public education, as well as being an example and a model for similar initiatives.
The jury aded that Robert Waltl's work embodies the spirit and values of this national prize, which was established in March 2024 by the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to honour the life and work of Ambassador Mihnea Constantinescu and his remarkable contribution in fighting and preventing anti-Semitism, and raising awareness about the dangers of all forms of anti-Semitism, xenophobia, radicalisation and hate speech.
Mihnea Constantinescu was a distinguished diplomat, Ambassador, Special Representative of the Romanian Government on Energy Security Issues. He held senior positions in the Romanian Foreign Ministry and served as a diplomatic advisor to several Prime Ministers. From March 2016 to March 2017, he was President of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and was instrumental in the adoption of a non-legally binding working definition of anti-Semitism, which served as a guide for the work of the IHRA.
Mono performance with puppets:
Isaac Babel
ODESSA STORIES /
THE STORY OF MY DOVECOTE
16 January 2025 at 20.00 at the Mini Mini Hall
Postponed from 23.1. for technical reasons.
Tickets are available at the Mini teater box office, all Eventim outlets or online.
Translation: Sara Špelec
Director: Robert Smolík
Puppets and set design: Radka Mizerová
Music: Veronika Svoboda
Video: Atej Tutta
Acting and animation: Robert Waltl
Director's assistant: Barbara Vidovič
Language consultant: Jože Faganel
Photo: Igor Huzbašić
Musical coordinator: Žarko Prinčič
Coproduction:
Jewish Cultural Center Ljubljana
Mini teater
1st Premiere:
23rd November 2024 at 18.00
2nd Premiere:
24th November 2024 at 18.00
On the occasion of the 35th anniversary of Robert Waltl's artistic career.
ABOUT THE PLAY:
Babel's Odessa Stories are inspired by the Bible. From the Old Testament comes the conflict between the chosen Jewish people and the Russian state, which was destroying in pogroms the civilisation of a biblical people condemned for all time as criminal because the Jews had betrayed and condemned the Christian saviour. On this historical destiny, the Jews of Odessa built their New Testament paradise on earth, or rather in the underworld of Odessa: a paradise ruled by the laws of bandits and smugglers. Babel described the Odes bandits and their brutal reckonings; everyone was involved in terror and death, from the gang members to the craftsmen, the disabled old men and the child violin virtuosos of ethnically mixed Odessa. Jewish old men, mothers, fathers and children became the heroes of a new literary mythology, replacing the celestials of the old religion.
The writer saw both the cruelty of life and the enchantment of everyday birth and love, both the ugliness of violent death and the beauty of the sublime reality manifested in weddings, celebrations and religious customs. In this hell between the Tsar's army and domestic banditry, Babel's Jews were saved by their faith in the chosenness of the people and by the incredible fertility that substituted birth for death. Thus a heterogeneous mix of human characters emerged, belonging to the different nations of Odessa: the descendants of the ancient peoples were joined throughout history by the heirs of the conquerors, the Mongols, and then by members of Asian and European nations, from the Greeks to the Armenians, from the Jews to the Cossacks, from the Russians to the French, from the English to the Italians. Isaac Babel was an extraordinary stylist. He carried his prose around with him in his luggage, filing and carving it like a carver carves his statues - wherever he went, on the road and at rest. His metaphors are as picturesque as Jewish clothing and religious rituals; they express the writer's soul, which now yearns for a better life like a child, and now revels in the sight of the bleeding victims of pogroms and banditry. Birth and death are Babel's main themes, present in short, broken sentences from the beginning to the end of each story, and thus of the whole collection of Odessa Stories. With them, Babel - alongside Zamyatin, Pilnyak, Bulgakov and Platonov - became a pillar of stylised Russian prose between the two world wars.
The Story of My Dovecote is one of the most beautiful stories of childhood in all world literature, although, contrary to the traditional conception of this period as a lost paradise, it contains a surprising bitterness and a painful recollection of young years committed to a strict traditional upbringing. Overwhelmingly, the world around him is also still threatened by violence - 'a world in which the world of the child who went after the pigeons and survived the pogrom is not fulfilled, but melted away. The pigeons, of course, represent innocent dreams and desires, and the mutilated man the vain world that tramples them.
Babel is certainly not a larpurlartist. He was executed in the early 1940s for his social engagement and his criticism, which was in fact mostly a mirror. It is a historical fact that at its peak, Odessa was home to around 60,000 Jews. After the Second World War, they were practically gone. Anti-Semitism has a long tradition in Europe and there was no shortage of violence and intolerance towards Jews even before the Holocaust. Babel must have had a strong reason for writing such bitter and sad stories as its mentioned above. We have the typical Jewish hope to console us. For example: despite all the hardships of life at that time, the boy we meet in the story sees a future for himself. He wants to be a writer. He tries his hand at the violin. The Odessa Stories preserve human sobriety in the face of events worthy only of mad thoughts.
Robert Waltl celebrates his 35 years of artistic work in the theatre with this performance.
Puppet performance:
LITTLE VAMPIRE GOES TO SCHOOL
25 January 2025 at 11.00 at Mini teater
Tickets are available at the Mini teater box office, all Eventim outlets or online.
Translator: Izar Lunaček
Director: Jernej Potočan
Cast:
Nejc Jezernik
Matic Lukšič
Tina Resman
Dramaturg: Brina Jenček
Stage designer: Dan Pikalo
Costume designer: Nika Dolgan
Puppet designer and visual appearance: Izar Lunaček
Technical advisor: Mitja Ritmanič
Authors of the songs:
Matic Lukšič
Jernej Potočan
Light designer: Domen Lušin
Puppet maker: Aleksander Andželović
Photo: Asiana Jurca Avci
Executive producer: Branislav Cerović
Co-production:
Jewish Cultural Center Ljubljana
Mini teater
Premiere: 26th September 2023
Duration: 45 min
Puppet performance for children from 5 y/o
We would like to thank the Municipality of Ljubljana for its support.
Little Vampire Goes to School (1999) is the story of a little Vampire who lives with his big family in an old villa. Because he is very lonely, he wants to go to a human school. But there he is in for a surprise, as the human children sleep at night. The living dead therefore organise a school for Little Vampire and other ghosts. The teacher is the Captain of the monsters. He tells the pupils not to write in the notebooks left at school by the day pupils, but Little Vampire disobeys him: he does his maths homework in the notebook of the boy in whose desk he sits. And as the living boy Marcel finds out the next day - without any mistakes at all. Through their shared notebook, Little Vampire and Marcel begin to correspond and eventually strike up a warm friendship. With a masterful blend of humour and tragedy and a clever switch between the creepy and the comical, the story cleverly raises themes such as loneliness, death, faith in God and the value of true friendship.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Joann Sfar, born on 28 August 1971, is a French comic artist, comic book creator, writer and film director. He is considered one of the most important artists of the new Franco-Belgian comics. He has created an iconic series about vampires, in which he explores his Jewish roots, death, friendship, rebelliousness and uprightness with a great deal of humour and compassion. Sfar was born in Nice, the son of pop singer Lilou, who died when he was three, and André Sfar, a lawyer known for prosecuting neo-Nazis. Due to his mother's early death, Joan was raised by his father and grandfather on his mother's side, a military doctor of Ukrainian origin who served in the Alsace-Lorraine Independence Brigade (France) during the Second World War. Sfar's grandfather is said to have saved the right arm of the Brigade's leader, the writer André Malraux, for which he was granted French citizenship. A highly prolific artist, Joann is considered one of the most important creators of the new wave of Franco-Belgian comics, although he has rejected the claim that he, along with artists such as Christophe Blain, Marjane Satrapi and Lewis Trondheim, sought to create an alternative scene or a new movement in comics. Many of his comics were published by L'Association, a publishing house founded in 1990 by Jean-Christophe Menu and six other artists. He also worked with many of the group's main artists, such as David B. and Lewis Trondheim. The Donjon series, which he created with Trondheim, has a cult following in many countries. Some of his comics are inspired by his Jewish heritage. Sfar is the son of Jewish parents (an Ashkenazi mother whose family was from Ukraine and a Sephardic father from Algeria). He himself says that his Professeur Bell series (loosely based on Joseph Bell) has Ashkenazi humour, while Le chat du rabbin is clearly inspired by his Sephardic side. Les olives noires is a series about a Jewish child living in Israel at the time of Jesus. Like Le chat du rabbin, this series contains a lot of historical and theological information.
THE DIRECTOR ABOUT THE SHOW:
The world that Sfar creates within the comics is on the one hand a world of the magical and fantastic, and on the other hand a world of the everyday. Despite all the clichéd conventions of the magical that we know, in comics Sfar looks for magic in small things, relationships and friendship, not in supernatural beings and powers. Everything around us can be magical. The people we meet, the events and play that bring us together and open up new worlds, the pain we endure and the happiness we radiate. More than the magical immortality of the protagonist Little Vampire and his ability to fly, there is a certain magic in the friendship that Little Vampire and Marcel forge. Their friendship is the collision of two worlds that are seemingly incompatible. The world of the mortal and the immortal, the world of the mundane and the world of the supernatural, the world of the day and the world of the night... Nevertheless, Little Vampire and Marcel share a similar experience. Both feel lonely within their own worlds. In the Vampire's world, there are no children. For centuries he remains an only child, without peer group and forbidden contact with the outside world. Marcel's socialisation within his own world is hindered by the death of his parents, which has left a strong impression on him. Through comics, the show will confront cynicism and resignation. "Some disasters open magical doors" is the key line uttered by the Monster Captain in the comic, when he convinces Marcel that he is too young to believe in anything. It is not about denying pain and helplessness, but about finding courage in the most difficult moments, which in the bigger picture can sometimes bring experiences that would otherwise remain hidden from us. An important element of the performance will be the live music, which will dictate the atmosphere and navigate between two seemingly incompatible worlds that ultimately become one.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR:
Jernej Potočan (1996) started his studies in dramaturgy in 2015, and later in 2019 he began his studies in directing at AGRFT. As a dramaturg he has worked on the plays Under construction, 410 kilometres, Polenta and While spotify is creating a custom playlist for me called moodymix. He also directed the latter two. The play Under construction, in which he participated, was awarded a special jury prize at the 52nd Slovenian Drama Week. He is also a playwright. Three of his plays have been published (The Waste, Every Song is Sung Once, The Sorrows). He received the Grossman Prize for his short script The Zoo, the Second Prize of the One Minute Play Contest for his text We Were Left Without Friends, We Collected Stamps, and the Red Thread Prize for his text The Sorrows. Two of his texts have also been staged (The Sorrows - MGL and Lullaby in a Windowless Room - a collaboration between AG and AGRFT).
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR AND PUPPET DESIGNER:
Izar Lunaček(1979) is a PhD in philosophy and comics artist. His comics have been published in numerous Slovenian online and print media, such as Delo, Slovenske novice, Mladina and Ludliteratura, and have been collected in ten book editions. Two of them have been published abroad: Paradise in Spain and England, and Animal Noir was published in 2017 as a classic paperback by the American giant IDW. He has recently turned his PhD thesis on the links between comedy and religion into a comic, which will be published next year in an American version by Uncivilized. Lunaček has also illustrated a number of educational books for children from the pens of names such as Miro Cerar and Lučka Kajfež Bogataj, many of which have won the Golden Pear Award for the best educational publication of the year. In his spare time, he runs Stripolis, the only specialised comics shop in the centre of Ljubljana, where he organises events on the subject of the ninth art and, together with Kino Šiška and Stripburger magazine, the central Slovenian comics festival Tinta, which he also co-founded. As part of Stripolis, he also publishes books by Slovenian and visiting authors, many of which he translates himself from French and English, and his translations have been nominated for the best translation of the year award by the French Institute. In 2022, Lunaček was awarded the Order of the Knight of Arts and Letters by France for his efforts in promoting French comics in this country.
Theatre performance:
THE JEWISH DOG
27 January 2025 at 20.00 at Mini teater
Tickets are available at the Mini teater box office, all Eventim outlets or online.
Author: Asher Kravitz
Director, author of the concept, adaptation, set
and costume design: Yonatan Esterkin
Translator: Katja Šmid
Performed by: Miha Rodman
Voices in the recordings:
Miha Rodman, Yonatan Esterkin
Dramaturgy: Anja Krušnik Cirnski
Video and sound: Vid Hanjšek
Language consultant: Mateja Dermelj
Co-production:
Jewish Cultural Centre Ljubljana,
Mini teater
Prešeren Theatre Kranj
With special thanks to Asher Kravitz
The Jewish Dog (Yediot Books, 2007) is an autobiography of Cyrus, a dog born in mid-1930s into the household of the German-Jewish family Gottlieb. Cyrus is a special dog, unusually sensitive to humans’ emotions and determined to fully comprehend human speech. The novel follows his life and contemplations while he’s making his way through Europe during World War II. Cyrus witnesses the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust, and all the love he knows comes from the Gottlieb family.
A Nazi decree forces the family out of their home, and unfortunate events separate them from Cyrus. His path leads form a loving Jewish family to a stray dog, a wild pack, and even to an SS Nazi guard dog at the Treblinka extermination camp. He undergoes several name changes, he is left to himself in increasingly dangerous situations, the only thing keeping him alive is his strong survival instinct, and all he yearns is to be reunited with the Gottlieb family.
With skillful fluidity of language, Kravitz employs ingeniously harrowing metaphors and imagery to describe historic events of World War II as seen by an unusually sensitive and insightful Jewish dog. The result is a powerful and heart-wrenching narrative, and Cyrus is poignant and unforgettable character.
Theatre performance:
THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK
3 February 2025 at 19.00 at Mini teater
Tickets are available at the Mini teater box office, all Eventim outlets or online.
Author: Anne Frank
Director: Vinko Möderndorfer
Set designer: Branko Hojnik
Costume designer: Meta Sever
Video: Atej Tutta
Proofreader: Jože Faganel
Cast:
Anna Frank: Gaja Filač
Margot Frank: Saša Pavlin Stošić
Edith Frank: Medea Novak
Otto Frank: Tadej Pišek
Gospa Van Daan: Barbara Vidovič
Gospod Van Daan: Aleš Kranjec
Peter Van Daan: Timotej Novaković
Stage movement:
Uršula Teržan
Mask:
Mirela Brkić
Coproduction:
Jewish Cultural Center Ljubljana
Mini teater
We thank The Embassy of the Kingdom of Netherlands in Ljubljana for their support.
The dramatisation is based on the text of the book THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK, translation - Polonca Kovač, Mladinska knjiga, 2019, 2022.
Performing rights S. Fischer Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, Germany; ©
For ages 12+.
Premiere:
25 December 2022
Born on 12 June 1929 in Frankfurt am Main, Anne Frank emigrated with her parents to Amsterdam in 1933. When the German Wehrmacht invaded and occupied the Netherlands in 1940, Anne Frank's family, together with four others, hid in Otto Frank's company house. During this time, 13-year-old Anne confided her feelings and thoughts to a diary, in which she recorded her daily life in hiding and her fear of being discovered. The diary ended on 1 August 1944: three days later, the Jewish inhabitants of the last house were denounced and arrested, and the Frank family was deported to Auschwitz, where they were separated. Anne Frank and her sister Margot died seven months later in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Her mother Edith died in Auschwitz on 6 January 1945. Otto Frank, Anna and Margot's father, is the only survivor from the last house. After the war, he received his daughter's diary and published extracts from it for the first time in 1947. To date, the full version of Anne Frank's diary has been published in more than 80 languages.
ABOUT THE PLAY:
The Diary of Anne Frank is one of the most important texts of the 20th century. And not only because of the calamities that the Jewish people have endured, that Anne Frank's family has endured and not survived. The diary is also an important work of literature. And the little girl Anne is an exceptionally gifted observer of life and human character.
We can sense a great talent for writing in her work. Anna committed herself to writing at a very early age. It was her desire, her ambition, her joy, her talent, which she felt was her personal mission.
Reading the diary, one also wonders how many talents, how many Mozarts, Beethovens, Michelangelos... how many great writers, painters, can be killed by genocidal politics. And not only talents, but how many lives, and every life is a universe, have been lost because of the foolish hatred generated by politics. Not only in the past. Even today.
The Diary of Anne Frank is an extremely relevant work. Young and talented people are living on the brink of life and death even today. The diary of a young girl who spent two years in hiding and eventually died a horrific death as a result of betrayal will remind us that even today we are constantly living on the brink of the Holocaust. The younger generations, in particular, should be more aware of this. That is why Mini teater's decision to include this text in its theatre programme is one of the most important repertoire decisions in Slovenian theatre.
Dramatisation was a very challenging job. I wrote it from the moment Robert Waltl offered me the director's chair. I don't know how many times I read the diary before I finally found the right form of dramatisation. I tried to keep the form of the diary, despite the dialogue scenes. It was necessary to shape the dramatic scenes and at the same time to remain faithful to the impression of the characters that the young writer presented in her diary entries.
I was particularly interested in how two very different families, with three teenagers, live their hidden lives in a claustrophobic space, constantly exposed to fear for their lives.
I have extracted the most important and intense scenes from the text, where the anguish of living together and the conflicting human characters, forced into an impossible situation by hatred, are revealed. Father Otto Frank is the person who tries to maintain optimism at all costs in the increasingly nervous life of two families. Otto Frank fights against sadness, against all the ills of living together, no matter how much he himself suffers in the process. He is an extremely strong personality who can be an example of humanity and kindness in a cruel time.
In specific situations, the most ordinary things of life (washing, bathing, toileting, etc.) become the most severe ordeals. But Anna is also a very lively girl. She is cheerful, curious, witty... In the extremes of life people fight against evil and for survival also with humour. I also found this important in our dramatisation.
The Diary of Anne Frank is a vivisection of human relationships in specific circumstances. But it is also a vivisection of growing up. The birth of love. It is, in fact, the story of Romeo and Juliet at the time of the Holocaust and the European apocalypse. It is the story of how love wants to conquer death. But it is also a story of disillusionment. It is a story of fear. A story of a future stolen from millions of people.
Somewhere in her diary, Anna says: "It makes me sick to think that all those who were so close to me, my classmates, are now at the mercy of the worst rabble that ever existed. Why? Because we are different? Are we really different? Because we are all human. People who feel pain, fear, love... I don't understand, I really don't understand. What happened to the people?!"
We need to question this also today.
We must always ask ourselves questions like Anne Frank, just so perhaps history will not repeat itself in the most horrible way.
Anna's story is our story.
Are we aware enough of this?
Vinko Möderndorfer
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR:
Vinko Möderndorfer (1958) is a writer, poet, essayist, playwright and director. He graduated in directing from the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television in Ljubljana. He started working as a director at the Experimental Theatre Glej in Ljubljana, where he was also the artistic director for a while. He has subsequently worked with various theatres and as a radio, television and film director. To date, he has directed more than a hundred theatre and opera performances. In 2003 he was awarded the title of Assistant Professor of Theatre Directing. He began his literary career in the second half of the 1970s. He first turned to poetry, and then continued in all areas of literary creation - from prose to drama, essays, radio plays, film scripts, children's and young people's literature. He has published more than sixty works in prose, poetry, drama and essays in book form. His professional articles and essays deal with theatre directing, dramaturgy and acting, as well as current social events. Among the works he has produced in recent years are the poetry collection for children: Pesmi in pesmičice (Poems and Little Songs), the novels for young people: Kot v filmu (As in the Movie) Kit na plaži (Whale on the Beach) and Jaz sem Andrej (I am Andrej), and for adults novels: Balzacov popek (Balzac's bellybutton), Konec zgodbe (The End of the Story), Druga preteklost (Another Past), the novella collection Navodila za srečo (Instructions for Happiness), the essayist work Ljudomrznik na tržnici, ….
Photo: Miha Fras
Performance for children:
THE NUTCRACKER
Author of adaptation:
Alena Ivanušenka
Director:
Aleksander Januškévič
Design of puppets and costumes:
Ljudmila Skitovič
Stage design:
Aleksander Januškévič and Ljudmila Skitovič
Music composed by:
Andrej Jevdakimav
Cast:
Lina Akif / Nika Korenjak
Tadej Pišek
Luka Bokšan
Translators at the rehersals:
Manca Golob
Valentina Žabkar
Ana Končar
Costumes tailored by:
Michael Ross
Slavica Janošević
Coproduction:
Jewish Cultural Center Ljubljana
Mini teate
Premiere:
27 November 2021
Duration: 50 minutes
Puppet performance for children from 5 y/o.
The Nutcracker is based on the classic tale The Nutcracker and the Mouse King by Prussian author E.T.A. Hoffman. Godfather Drosselmeyer tells the fairy tale to the girl Marie. Long ago, the wicked Queen Mishilda brought a curse upon the little princess. To free her from the curse, the Nutcracker became the Nutcracker as we know him: a wooden dummy that can do nothing but crack nuts. The girl Marie cannot understand why the royal family has forgotten all about the Nutcracker and has not helped him. She wonders if he might really have something in common with the princess in the fairy tale.
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Musical encounter with Rabbi Motl Gordon
SONGS IN YIDDISH AND
CONVERSATIONS ABOUT WHAT
WE CARRY WITHIN
Photo: Igor Huzbašić
On Wednesday, 25 September, the Jewish Cultural Centre and Mini teater, as a part of the European project TRAST, hosted the event Songs in Yiddish and Conversations about What We Carry Within - a musical encounter with Rabbi Motl Gordon, a prominent expert on Jewish culture and customs.
During the event, Rabbi Motl Gordon introduced the audience to the Yiddish language, sharing its rich history and current usage. He led an engaging discussion about the people who still speak Yiddish today and shared personal stories and songs, all accompanied by live musical performances.
Motl Gordon is the founder of the Hopescrolling volunteer project, a social entrepreneur. He started out as a researcher and teacher of Yiddish culture, especially its language and music. Initially, he used these as tools to help build Jewish identity, then Judaism itself. Later, as a rabbi, Motl became increasingly focused on the Jewish concept of social responsibility, now expressing this value through both language and music, intertwining culture and community action.
This event, as part of the TRAST project, provided an opportunity for the Jewish community living and working as a minority in Ljubljana to engage deeply with their cultural heritage, while also adding value to the project's research on members of the Jewish community.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
“JEWISH LIFE IN LJUBLJANA 2” – STREET PERFORMANCE OPENS
EUROPEAN DAYS OF JEWISH CULTURE
AS PART OF THE TRAST PROJECT
Photo: Miha Fras
Organized by Mini teater and the Jewish Cultural Center Ljubljana as part of the TRAST project, the large street performance Jewish Life in Ljubljana 2 took place on 1 September 2024 on Križevniška Street in Ljubljana. This performance also served as the official opening of the European Days of Jewish Culture festival in Ljubljana, an annual event aimed at showcasing Jewish heritage and promoting dialogue, recognition, and exchange through various activities across the continent.
The performance Jewish Life in Ljubljana 2 was directed by Robert Waltl, who is also the author of the concept, with text prepared by Vinko Möderndorfe. It is based on the collection of personal artifacts, testimonies, and photographs collected for the Jewish Cultural Center’s exhibition Holocaust in Ljubljana. The production followed the principles of Museum Theatre, introducing a new storytelling method that integrates theatricality into cultural and heritage interpretation.
Actors portrayed real individuals who once lived on Križevniška Street, recounting their stories of Jewish life before and during World War II. Timotej Novaković and Nika Korenjak played the roles of Julijana and Vera Moskovič, Robert Korošec portrayed Oton Baumgarten, whose last residence was at Križevniška Street 7, and Barbara Vidovič played Truda Kapper. Nika Korenjak and Barbara Vidović also told the story of two aunts of composer Urban Koder, who hid a young Jewish man from Ljubljana, Fritz Wolfeiler. Both aunts were discovered and later murdered in the Ravensbruck camp. Robert Waltl masterfully connected the historical context and Jewish traditions and customs throughout the event.
The performance was accompanied by the Slovenian musical group Kontra Kvartet (Vesna Čobal – violin, Daniel Marinič – accordion, Domen Marn – clarinet, Petar Marić – guitar, Luka Dobnikar – double bass). They added a unique touch to the nearly two-hour event by performing klezmer music, the traditional music of Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews. With instruments including guitar, violin, clarinet, accordion, and double bass, they brought to life the charm of Eastern European dance rhythms with twenty rarely-heard songs. The music, full of passion, drama, melancholy, and positivity, captivated the audience.
The event attracted around 150 attendees, including diplomats, tourists, local residents, and especially members of the Jewish community in Ljubljana. Free guided tours were also offered at the Jewish Museum and the exhibition Holocaust in Ljubljana, providing further insight into the historical experiences of Jews in the city.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
SHOAH - WE REMEMBER 2024
LJUBLJANA, JEWISH CULTURAL CENTER and MINI TEATER
25 January at 18.00 in Mini teater
CENTRAL SLOVENIAN EVENT ON
HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY
A central Slovenian event on Holocaust Remembrance Day with the reading of the names of Slovenian Holocaust victims.
The keynote speaker will be the writer, poet, playwright and director Vinko Möderndorfer.
Screening of the movie:
PHOTOGRAPHER
In cooperation with the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Slovenia.
Directed by: Dariusz Jablonski
Running time: 52 min
Year: 1998
Genre: documentary
Country: Poland
In 1987, several hundred color slides documenting scenes from the Łódź Ghetto during World War II were discovered in a second-hand bookstore in Vienna, Austria. These slides were the work of Walter Genewein, an Austrian citizen serving the Nazis. Being an accountant in the ghetto's council, he solicited for turning the ghetto into a prosperous and well-organised company, and since he was not just an ambitious office worker, but also an enthusiastic photographer, he recorded their "achievements" with a camera.
Genewein's slides are used by the authors to show—both through them and, to some extent, in spite of them—the real history of the Łódź Ghetto and the suffering and eventual extermination of the Polish Jews living there. The photographs are combined and compared with the recollections of Dr. Arnold Mostowicz, who worked as a doctor in the ghetto, and the last surviving witness of the events.
27 January at 12.00 and at 18.00 in Jewish Cultural Center
GUIDED TOUR OF THE EXHIBITION HOLOCAUST IN LJUBLJANA,
JEWISH CULTURAL CENTER
AND SYNAGOGUE
The opening of the first permanent museum exhibition dedicated to the Holocaust in Ljubljana, Holocaust in Ljubljana, was held at the Jewish Cultural Center on September 1, which was prepared by the curator dr. Blaž Vurnik, artists Miran Mohar, Vadim Fiškin and Robert Waltl. The MOL, Department of Culture, Mini Teater and Mercator d.o.o. provided financial support for the realization of the exhibition. It is the first permanent installation of an exhibition about this dark period in our capital. The exhibition was created on the basis of the research of many Slovenian historians and researchers of the Holocaust in Slovenia, especially the research of Boris Hajdinjak and Robert Waltl on the placement of the Ljubljana stumbling blocks, when we symbolically brought the Ljubljana victims to their family doors, gave them back their names and set up a symbolic grave, intermedia artist Vuk With the project Undeleted, Ćosić revived their portraits, by recording their fates, with Slovenian actors Karin Komljanec, Julijan Pop Tasić, Barbara Vidović, Aleš Kranjec, Robert Korošec, Luka Bokšan, Niko Korenjak and Timotej Novaković, and with the cooperation of Vinko Möderndorfer, Toni Soprano Meneglje and Roberta Waltl, and we prepared their stories for the exhibition Holocaust in Ljubljana, which, after 8 years, completes our efforts to raise awareness among the Slovenian and international public about the Holocaust in Slovenia and its consequences.
Since 2014, the synagogue of the Jewish community of Slovenia has been operating in the JKC premises. In 2022, we renovated the premises and now the synagogue of the Jewish Community of Slovenia and the Liberal Jewish Community of Slovenia operate here together with Rabbi Alexander Grodensky and cantor Nikola David.
30 January at 18.00 in Mini teater
A MUSICAL-LITERARY EVENING
WITH DAVID CASALI
In cooperation with the Embassy of Italy and the Italian Institute for Culture in Slovenia.
A selection of Jewish music on piano and clarinet with an interpretation of excerpts from the book "Is this a man" by Primo Levi.
9th FESTIVAL HOUSE OF TOLERANCE 2023
HOUSE OF OTHERS
The 9th edition of the Festival House of Tolerance 2023 - House of Others took place at the Mini teater Ljubljana and the Jewish Cultural Centre Ljubljana from 13 to 21 November 2023.
At this year's festival, audiences had the opportunity to see 21 of the most engaging feature films, documentaries, shorts and animated films of recent production from the USA, Germany, Poland, Israel, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary, France, the UK, Cyprus,... focusing on tolerance, human rights, the relationship between the individual and the state, social engagement, as well as topical and relevant issues such as war, refugees, media propaganda and the culture of memory. During the festival we hosted the German director of the film Liebe Angst, Sandra Prechtel, the American director of the film Four Winters, Julia Mintz, and the producer of the film Zhen Cheah, the Polish director of the film A Story of One Crime, Mariusz Pilis, and the producer of the film Dagmara Pilis.
Opening of the festival with a speech by the festival director Robert Waltl, keynote speaker Dr Dominika Švarc Pipan, Minister of Justice, and a conversation with the German director of Liebe Angst, Sandra Prechtl.
Photo: Miha Fras
A very important and successful part of this year's festival were the educational mornings for primary and secondary schools, where young audiences had the opportunity to watch three outstanding animated films, followed by a discussion on tolerance and human rights.
The festival also included a presentation of the book The Volunteer, where the Ambassador of the Republic of Poland Krzysztof Olendzki and the editor of the Cankar Publishing House Aljosha Harlamov spoke about the book by Jack Fairweather. Dr Boris Vezjak gave a lecture entitled Why is hatred of Islam a variation of Nazi hatred of Jews? to a packed hall. Vita Mavrič performed the project Almonds and Raisins with the Quartet Akord, which delighted the sold-out hall, and the premiere of the story Irma Shouldn't Ask, co-produced by KD Pripovedovalski Variete, Mini teater and the Slovenian Youth Theatre, was also performed.
Photo: Miha Fras
During the festival, visitors could also see the exhibition Anne Frank - A Story for the Present, organised by the Museum of Contemporary and Modern History of Slovenia, and the permanent exhibition Holocaust in Ljubljana.
During the festival, we also witnessed anti-Semitic vandalism of the entrance gate of the Jewish Cultural Centre with a swastika. We were backed by the diplomatic corps in Slovenia, who came in person to express their support, and the act was also condemned by President Nataša Pirc Musar, Foreign Minister Tanja Fajon and Minister of the Interior Boštjan Poklukar.
This incident and the vulgar attack make it even more obvious how urgently we need a festival like our Festival of Tolerance in our society.
Photo: Miha Fras
We would like to thank all the supporters who made this year's festival possible:
Ljubljana Municipality - Department of Culture, Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia, Embassy of the USA, Embassy of Germany, Embassy of Poland, Embassy of Israel, Austrian Cultural Forum Ljubljana, Embassy of Bulgaria, Hungarian Cultural Institute, French Institute, British Council Slovenia and Energetika Ljubljana.
We would also like to thank all the visitors who joined us at our screenings and events.
EUROPEAN DAYS OF
JEWISH CULTURE 2023
The fundamental objective of this European-wide event, which has been organised since 1999, is to highlight the diversity and richness of Judaism and its local, regional and national historical importance, with the firm intention of promoting dialogue, recognition and exchange through conferences, concerts, performances, guided tours and other activities, which take place simultaneously throughout the continent.
The European Days of Jewish Culture festival is held every year around a central theme that serves as inspiration for all the activities that take place in a decentralised, pluralistic and open way from the first Sunday in September. The AEPJ - European Association for the Preservation and Promotion of Jewish Culture and Heritage has coordinated this event at European level since its beginnings, giving cohesion, visibility and relevance to the activities organised. In addition, the AEPJ offers training, resources and support to any organisation, institution or individual who wishes to organise an activity that allows Jewish culture to be shared with the whole of society.
Events at the Jewish Cultural Center Ljubljana, organised as part of European Days of Jewish Culture 2023
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30 and 31 August at 20.00 on Križevniška Street
Street performance JEWISH LIFE IN LJUBLJANA
The street performance Jewish Life in Ljubljana, written and directed by Robert Waltl and Vinko Möderndorfer and directed by Yonatan Esterkin, starred Hanna Hill / Gaja Filač, Nathan Hecht / Nikola David, Omer Rozenblum / Aleš Kranjec, Nika Korenjak, Barbara Vidovič, Timotej Novaković, Robert Korošec and Tadej Pišek in eight parts presented a fragment of pre-war Jewish life in Ljubljana with Jewish customs and celebrations, as well as the occupation and the Holocaust period in Ljubljana, when the local Jews were first joined by thousands of refugees, first from Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, and after 1941, especially by hundreds of Croatian Jews who were persecuted by the NDH and found a temporary safe haven in Ljubljana. The show then takes us through the persecution of the Jews of Ljubljana and their deportation to extermination camps, to their participation in the Liberation Front and the partisan units. All of this is connected by Jewish music, performed live by the musicians of the Kletzmer Trio (Tomaž Zevnik - clarinet, Aleksander Jovetić - violin and Žiga Vehovec - accordion).
Before the Second World War, Ljubljana was home to a number of Jewish families, although the community was relatively small, numbering less than 200 people. They had their own customs, their own habits. People of Jewish origin also lived in Križevniška Street. As in many streets in our city. They lived here from ancient times. They lived peacefully. They were doctors, students, merchants, shoemakers, bankers, builders, lawyers, ... They married each other, but also outside their families and religion. They cultivated their own customs. Sometimes more openly, sometimes more covertly, depending on the times, politics and the social mood. After the occupation of Yugoslavia in 1941, the situation worsened for Jews on Slovenian soil. The Jewish religion was otherwise practised by fewer than a thousand believers in the territory of the pre-war Drava province, most of them in Prekmurje. The German occupier persecuted the Jews most in its occupied territory in Styria and Gorenjska, while the Italian and Hungarian occupiers took a more lenient stance, especially towards the Jews who had already lived in the occupied territory before the Second World War.
When the Italians occupied Ljubljana, many young Jews worked with the Liberation Front. More than many Slovenes, Jewish families were aware of the danger of fascism and nazism. Very soon, however, bans on Jewish inhabitants also appeared in Ljubljana. The Pollak, Ebenspanger, Bolaffio, Silberstein, Steinberg, Baumgarten, Moskovič, Kapper, Lorant, Goldstein, Oblat,... families were targeted.
Photo: Miha Fras
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1 September at 18.00 at the Jewish Cultural Centre Ljubljana, Križevniška 3
Grand opening of the permanent exhibition HOLOCAUST IN LJUBLJANA
On 1 September, at 6 pm, the first permanent exhibition Holocaust in Ljubljana was officially opened at the Jewish Cultural Centre Ljubljana. The exhibition is a collaboration between the Jewish Cultural Centre Ljubljana and the City Museum of Ljubljana. The curator of the exhibition is Dr. Blaž Vurnik and the visual installation was created by artists Miran Mohar and Vadim Fiškin. The official speaker at the opening of the exhibition was the President of the Republic of Slovenia, Nataša Pirc Musar.
The exhibition was made possible with the financial support of Municipality of Ljubljana, the Department of Culture, Mini teater and Mercator d.o.o.
In recent years, the Jewish Cultural Centre Ljubljana - House of Tolerance, the House of "Others", has been particularly committed to a number of programmes raising awareness of the horrors of the Holocaust. The Holocaust is not a dusty story from history, but a chapter that must be part of the general awareness of every educated person. It is the subject of many academics and researchers around the world, there is a wealth of literature, a wealth of documentary and pictorial material, many testimonies of survivors, the remnants of concentration camps, and museums dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust.
This is the first permanent exhibition about this dark period in our capital city. The exhibition is based on the research of a number of Slovenian historians and researchers of the Holocaust in Slovenia, especially Boris Hajdinjak and Robert Waltl, who set up the Ljubljana Stumbling Blocks, where we brought the Ljubljana victims to their family gates in a symbolic way, gave them back their names and erected a symbolic grave, and the intermedia artist Vuk Ćosić, with his project Undeleted, revived their portraits by filming their fates, with Slovenian actors Karin Komljanec, Julian Pop Tasić, Barbara Vidović, Aleš Kranjc, Robert Korošec, Luka Bokšan, Nika Korenjak and Timotej Novaković, with the participation of Vinka Möderndorfer, Toni Soprano Meneglejte and Robert Waltl , we prepared their stories for the exhibition Holocaust in Ljubljana, which after 8 years completes our efforts to raise awareness of the Holocaust in Slovenia and its consequences among the Slovenian and international public.
It is also a remarkable example of cooperation between the Jewish Cultural Centre, a non-governmental organisation that does not receive support from the State of Slovenia, and the Municipal Museum of Ljubljana, an elite cultural institution in Slovenia.
In 2015, we conceived the multimedia House of Tolerance Festival in Ljubljana, which shows films and performances on minorities, the underprivileged and the Holocaust. The festival educates young people about tolerance and respect for difference and diversity. It reminds the elderly that issues of tolerance and non-exclusion are never fully internalised and that it is necessary to keep repeating and adding new elements to remind them that evil erupts as soon as we stop talking about respect.
At a time when fascism is once again being denounced (with a tendency to marshal it) in Europe, we are also trying to remind the public of the terrible experience of the Holocaust with the "Stumbling Blocks" project. Works such as these small golden plaques challenge the Nazi idea of eradicating certain groups of people - Jews, Roma, the disabled, the freethinking, homosexuals, Slovenes - and will continue to do so until all traces of their existence on Earth have disappeared. Six years ago, we started a project in Ljubljana and Prekmurje to lay "stumbling blocks" and to research the fate of the Jews of Ljubljana and Jewish refugees during the Holocaust who came to Ljubljana in the 1930s and then, especially intensively, after the occupation in 1941. "Stumbling Blocks" is an art project in which German artist Gunter Demnig pays tribute to the victims of National Socialism by placing brass cubes on the pavements in front of their last free address. The project follows European efforts to preserve the historical memory of all victims of fascism from 1933-1945, or the Holocaust, the greatest genocide in human history. Human history is replete with crimes planned, organised and committed by human beings for reasons of expediency, hubris or stupidity. Selfish interests or fanaticism have led to the destruction of entire tribes and, on several occasions, entire nations have been on the verge of extinction. In the list of the greatest crimes of this kind, also known as crimes against humanity, the attempted destruction of the Jewish people, a crime that entered human history some eight decades ago under the name of the Holocaust, is by far the top one. Despite secular and religious laws, even with the help of those who otherwise swore by the commandments 'Thou shalt not kill', 'Thou shalt not steal' or 'Thou shalt not do unto another what you would not have another do unto you', the majority of the Jews living in Europe perished in the planned destruction of European Jewish communities. The statistics of the Slovenian victims are particularly devastating. Of the 1 000 or so Jews who lived on Slovenian soil before the war, only a few hundred remained after May 1945, and even these mostly emigrated in the years after the war.
The exhibition "Slovenian Schindlers - Slovenian Righteous Among the Nations" will also be on display at the Križevniška benches on Križevniška Street until the end of October. Who are the Slovenes who selflessly helped Jews during World War II, risking their own lives and the lives of their relatives, and who have therefore been included in the list of the Righteous Among the Nations? These are the distinguished Righteous Among the Nations who are of Slovenian descent. The awards are issued by a special committee of the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Documentation, Research, Education and Commemoration Centre, founded in 1963. It researches the stories of people who saved Jews during the Holocaust. Anyone who is not Jewish and who has helped Jews and risked his or her life to do a good deed can be declared righteous. However, he received no material compensation or reward for saving Jews, knowing that he was saving a man of Jewish descent who was at risk of being sent to a concentration camp. He did this on his own initiative, not because of a decision by the resistance movement.
On the same day last year, 1 September 2022, the renovated synagogue of the Liberal Jewish Community of Slovenia and the Jewish Community of Slovenia, which we use together and which will have its doors open on the occasion of the European Day of Jewish Culture and the Day of the Neighbourhood of the Cross, was inaugurated. The restoration of the Synagogue was generously supported by the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Jewish Agency for Israel.
HOLOCAUST IN LJUBLJANA
Jewish Cultural Center represented by: Robert Baruh Waltl
Co-production: City Museum Ljubljana (MGML) represented by: Blaž Peršin
Exhibition Author: dr. Blaž Vurnik
Visual Concept: Vadim Fiškin, Miran Mohar
Sound: Sašo Kalan
Exhibition Setup: Matej Primec, David Cerar
Production of exhibition object: Mizarstvo Jamnik
Text Proofreading: Katja Paladin
Translation into English: Borut Praper
Video Content and Direction: Robert B. Waltl
Actors in Dramatic Scenes in the Video: Karin Komljanec, Julijan Pop Tasić, Barbara Vidović, Aleš Kranjec, Robert Korošec, Timotej Novaković, Nika Korenjak in Luka Bokšan.
Video Recording: Toni Soprano Meneglejte
Photographic Material: Archive of the Jewish Cultural Center Ljubljana, personal archives
Financial support for the realization of the exhibition was provided by the City of Ljubljana, Department of Culture, Mini Theater, and Mercator d.o.o.
We thank the families of Holocaust survivors, researchers Dr. Irena Šumi and Boris Hajdinjak, as well as all Holocaust researchers in Slovenia for their valuable contribution.
The restoration of the Synagogue was generously supported by the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Jewish Agency for Israel.
The opening ceremony was followed by a Shabbat service with our cantor Nikola David.
Photo: Miha Fras
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1 September at 18.00 at the Jewish Cultural Centre Ljubljana, Križevniška 3
Opening of the exhibition
JEWISH SOLDIERS OF THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN EMPIRE ON
THE ISONZO FRONT
Jewish soldiers in front of the wooden synagogue on the Doberdoba plateau in 1915.
(source: Isonzo Front Association 1915-1917)
In 2024, we will commemorate the centenary of the start of the First World War. Twenty years later, the Second World War followed, so the first has not been treated to the extent that would have been important and necessary. As many Jews lived in Prekmurje at the turn of the 19th century, they also had to go to war: some of them became officers. The data on them is not yet definitive and is also unreliable, so we do not know how many of them were victims or how many died.The First World War involved no less than 36 countries. The bloody fighting at the Battle of Isonzo (1915-1917) thus bore a multinational as well as a multi-religious stamp. Jews were among the many soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian and Italian armies. Jewish officers also took part in this war, which, if we recall the Dreyfus affair, was not a given. But Emperor Franz Joseph I considered Jews to be his most loyal subjects, and the Austro-Hungarian Jews themselves repeatedly referred to the Emperor as a “fortress of tolerance”. By the outbreak of the First World War, only two Jews had reached the rank of general in the Austro-Hungarian army, and during the war three more Jewish officers became generals, among them Major-General Maximilian Maendl von Bughardt (1860-1929), who distinguished himself on the Soča front.
Scattered in various lands and cities, there were about 1.5 million Jews (4.6 per cent of the population) in the Austro-Hungarian Empire before World War I. In 1911, there were only 109 Jews among the active officers of the (joint) Austro-Hungarian army, which represented 0.6 per cent of the entire officer corps. There were slightly more of them among the reserve officers, and proportionally more among the military doctors and in the military administrative services. A higher percentage of Jewish officers served in the Hungarian Honved. The smallest number was in the cavalry. According to previous estimates, around 300,000 Jewish soldiers fought in the Imperial Royal Army in 1914-1918. Only the Russian Tsarist army enlisted more Jewish soldiers, around half a million. The heavy losses among officers in the first year of the war led to a large increase in the number of Jewish officers, as they joined from the reserve, in which the above-average Jewish presence was mainly a reflection of their higher education.
Jewish soldiers were present in greater or lesser numbers in most regiments of the Austro-Hungarian army that fought on the front, most of them in units coming from the central and north-eastern part of the monarchy.
In 1918, as many as 76 military rabbis served in the Austro-Hungarian army. Among other things, their duties included censoring letters written in Hebrew from the front. There were synagogues at the front as well as in the rear of the front, including the emergency synagogue in Maribor in 1917. There was also an improvised synagogue in Novo mesto.
In 1915, the command of the 5th Army of the Soca issued special regulations for the burial of fallen soldiers, including rules for fallen Jewish soldiers. The military Jewish graves had to be arranged in a uniform manner. The Jewish tombstone of stone was to be replaced by a wooden plaque about 20 cm wide and 70 cm high, rounded at the top. It was to have a Star of David on the top and, below, the Ten Commandments (I-V and VI-X) written in Roman numerals in two sections. The tombstone was also to bear an inscription with the name, rank, military unit and date of death. At the bottom was added the inscription ‘may he rest in peace’ or the appropriate saying in Hebrew script. According to military statistics and estimates, around 40 000 Jewish soldiers died during the First World War, of whom around 1 000 were officers. How many died on the Isonzo front can only be guessed at present.
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1 September at 21.00 on Križevniška Street
Concert of the ensemble ANBOT
Anbot brings together musicians of different musical backgrounds and, above all, varied professional missions who, with great dedication and few music schools, co-create a combination of music that is rarely heard nowadays. Anbot's repertoire includes songs from the Balkan nations (Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania), kletzmer (Jewish traditional music), film themes (Fellini - Amarcord), Irish and French folk motifs, old Latin hits and other songs that evoke nostalgia with their melodic impulses and paint the landscape of a time when live music still connected people with the warmth of its expressiveness.
Photo: Sašo Radej
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2 September at 18.00 in Mini teater, Križevniška 1
Theatre performance ANGELS IN AMERICA
The remarkable play Angels in America by Tony Kushner, directed by Ivica Buljan and performed by Robert Waltl, Timon Šturbe, Saša Pavlin Stošić, Domna Valić, Nejc Cijan Garlatti, Nina Violić, Petja Labović and Barbara Vidovič, subtitled as a "gay fantasy on national themes", and composed of two parts, The Millennium is Coming and Perestroika.
Tony Kushner's play Angels in America, subtitled as a "gay fantasia on national themes" and consisting of two parts, Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, first appeared on theatre stages in the early 1990s (1991 and 1992, first in San Francisco, a year later in London, and a year after that in New York), and immediately established itself as the most representative, and in many people's opinion the best, American play of the last decades. This reputation has also been confirmed by numerous productions in European theatres - in Slovenia, surprisingly, it only appeared for the first time three decades after its premiere, although the first part was published in book form as early as 2001 (American Drama of the Twentieth Century, edited by Zdravko Duša). This reputation is not, of course, a given, and it is something of a marker in its own right. Angels is an explicitly gay play, its characters are predominantly gay, and their problems are gay problems - but only on the surface, in the same way that AIDS is, on the surface, a disease that primarily afflicts gay men and drug addicts. If it quickly becomes apparent that the problems of Kushner's gay characters may be universal, it is nevertheless important for his play to conform to a logic in which the representative image of a world (America) can most accurately be captured through a marginal group defined by a specific, currently acute problem. Certainly the reputation of Angels has a special significance because it has shown that America (or the USA) is best represented at a certain moment in time by a play about a group of gay men facing AIDS.
The AIDS epidemic, which spread in the early 1980s, profoundly shaped the last two decades of the last century. Its contagiousness and rapid spread, its high mortality rate, its unpredictable and often very distressing course and, above all, the long absence of a cure, have led to AIDS being labelled the plague of the 20th century. For many, it meant the end of a world, indeed of the free world (since, like the covid that is close to us today, it restricted contact and socialising); and, given that it occurred at the turn of the millennium (which is also important for Kushner), it also heralded the apocalypse and the end of all that is known. It was understood by many through a conservative moralistic prism, too many even as a punishment for a "sinful" life. Indeed, AIDS spread particularly rapidly in gay circles, indeed in circles of freer sexual practice and illicit substances, including in artistic circles, but soon elsewhere, first in the great cultural centres and later everywhere (not only in America, but also in Europe, so that today, when the Western world has almost completely controlled it, it would, to our shame, be rampaging through poor Africa, which lacks the means to buy sufficient medicine). As a ubiquitous and extremely dangerous epidemic, it was a major issue of the time, a metaphor for some, a problem that should have been tackled more seriously for others. It was certainly also the subject of numerous plays, more or less radical productions and performances, a multitude of films of all kinds, right up to Hollywood melodramas. All of this has often been aimed at raising awareness, eliminating prejudices and accumulating political capital in order to force society and the state to accept the epidemic as a common problem and to devote the specific resources needed for research and the production of cures. Unlike the epidemic of covid, which has plagued us in recent years, and to control which countries have in turn devoted enormous resources (symptomatic of the fact that the notorious US President, the heir apparent to Reagan, has hesitated to do so and to disseminate his grotesque recommendations), AIDS has for a long time been neglected by politics, relegated to the margins of the gay community, which is deemed unworthy of the state's concern. Kushner's play is also about this; through the motif of a hard-to-get cure that only the most privileged members of the establishment can access, who, even by hiding their sexual orientation, belong to the ruling and established positions of power. Despite this important difference, today's epidemic is in many ways reminiscent of the spread of AIDS (which is one of the reasons why Kushner's play has flooded the theatre stages again in recent years), especially in one main aspect: in an epidemic crisis, the problems that have burdened society before are drastically exacerbated.
That is the greatness of Kushner's Angels in America. The play, which has been recognised as the most important on the subject of AIDS, makes it clear that AIDS is a subject that intensifies many of the fundamental problems of America, indeed of the USA (for it is not a continent, but the civilisational and political fabric of the country that bears that name). Indirectly, these are problems that concern the modern world as a whole, since the USA is, by force and by the logic of its influence, but also through the still-operating mythology of the 'New World', the paradigmatic country of modernity (and indeed it turns out that, despite being so firmly rooted in America, the drama in many places touches on problems that are also ours, with the political at the forefront of them). In this sense, Aids is a symptom, a crisis that only serves to accentuate the permanent crisis of this world. Kushner pays great attention to his characters, their personal motives and their stories, which are dominated by unresolved love relationships and eroticism. He puts at the centre two couples, a gay and a heterosexual one, both in the process of breaking up, during which they unexpectedly cross paths and bring other characters into the story of their agony. In doing so, he paints a broad and vivid picture of the contemporary urban world, in which individuals of all orientations and provenances are intertwined. He chooses them in such a way that, in addition to their own story, they represent different, in fact extremely diverse, segments of the supposed 'melting pot' of American society: Judaism and the European freethinking heritage, Mormons as representatives of a very specific American tradition and, on the other hand, the transvestite, the gay man and the woman, the mother and the beggar, the doctor... the reality horizon of this strange but symptomatic grouping is represented by the character of the corrupt right-wing lawyer Roy Cohn, the only one written based on a real person known from the political sphere (his story in the play consistently follows the details of real life). A thoroughly corrupt lawyer, closely connected to the levers of the greatest power in the country, also a closet homosexual, he represents in a paradigmatic way the tradition of the American Republicans who, since the infamous McCharty (the McCharty who led the witch-hunts in the 1950s), have more or less dominated the politics of the USA and the permanent crisis of this world. Against this figure of personified evil (who is not, by chance, a real person), the play sets another horizon: the transcendent and highly ambivalent figure of the angel who visits the sick protagonist. He embodies another, mysterious and complex tradition of communication with the (supposedly) godly, which aims at a deeper gaze and at transcending the entrapment in the already known. By demanding a halt to progress and the preservation of staticity, it seems problematic, yet its intervention allows for the opening up of a reality reduced to illness, universal decay and hopelessness. Although Prior - and the play with him - refuses his/her demand, it seems that it is the confrontation with the androgynous angel that forces a new understanding that allows this disintegrating society to regain its search for a more harmonious community.
Photo: Toni Soprano Meneglejte
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15 June - 15 December 2023 in Križevniška Street
Exhibition SLOVENE RIGHTEOUS AMONG NATIONS on the benches
of Križevniška Street
The exhibition is dedicated to the 16 righteous Slovenes who risked their lives to help Jews survive during the Holocaust.
The limits of human responsibility for fellow human beings is one of the most important issues of our time. The concept of responsibility is rooted in human rights. How many times have we heard the words: "it is not my business", "I was forced to do it"? Every time, it is a case of trying to shrug off responsibility for something one has done to another. But we should always know, at least in principle, what we do to ourselves and to others. The more responsible I am, the more human I am. Responsibility towards others determines our identity. Where are the limits of my responsibility? In the Jewish tradition, human beings are social beings and human life is the highest value: when a fellow human being is in danger, we must save him. If a life, whether of a family member or a stranger, is in danger, religious law mandates that human life must be saved. This is a mitzvah: a good and just act. Ancient Talmudic wisdom, handed down to us through the ages, says: Whoever saves one life has saved the whole world. The righteous among the nations are the people who put responsibility for their fellow human beings before fear and concern for their own lives. The whole world needs to hear about their heroism.
Robert Waltl
1. UROŠ ŽUN
Uroš Žun, a lawyer born in 1903 in Radovljica, rescued 16 Jewish girls who had fled to Maribor from Austria. In 1940, as a commissioner in Maribor, then on the route between Vienna and Trieste, an important outpost of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazism to the former Yugoslavia, he stamped their passes, although he knew what punishment awaited him and his family for helping Jews. He found refuge for the girls in a hotel in Maribor, owned by a Jew, the factory owner Marko Rosner, who connected them with the Jewish community in Zagreb. Žun was aware that he was facing punishment, so he fled to Zagreb with his wife and son Igor before the war began, and immediately after arriving in Maribor, the Germans issued a warrant for him and a prize of ten thousand marks. The Žuns themselves became refugees. They withdrew from Zagreb to Bosnia before the Ustasha authorities and remained there until the end of the war.
2. ANDREJ TUMPEJ
Priest Andrej Tumpej, born in 1886 in Lovrenc na Dravskem polju, helped Antonija Kalef and her daughters during the war in Belgrade. The mother and daughters were left alone when the Germans took the father to the camp straight into the gas cell. He provided them with forged documents, with which they lived in Belgrade until the end of the war. He helped two other sisters who betrayed his name due to brutal Gestapo torture. The girls were shot, Pastor Tumpej was arrested and tortured.
3. ZORA PIČULIN
Zora Pičulin, born in 1911 in Solkan, saved two-year-old Šaul as a nanny in Skopje in 1943. The parents were taken to the Treblinka extermination camp. Zora smuggled Šaul out of the hospital. After a long wandering, they arrived in the mountain town of Letnice and found refuge in the Catholic monastery there. After the war, Zora found Saul’s relatives, who adopted him and moved to Israel.
4. IVAN BRESKVAR
Ivan Breskvar, born in 1905 in Ljubljana, saved the children of Zdenka Hary and Renata Rosner in Varaždin. The mothers were taken to Jasenovac, the child was taken over by their Slovenian relative Milan Blass. Blass confided in his friend Ivan Breskvar, who took the child on a bicycle from Varaždin to Cerje Nebojse, where they waited for the end of the war.
5.,6. IVAN and LJUBICA ŽUPANČIČ
Ivan and Ljubica Župančič saved nine-year-old Dan. The father was captured by the Germans, the mother Štefa Stockheimer, the grandmother and grandfather were murdered in Jasenovac. Dan was then cared for by his other grandfather, Dr. Joseph Stockhamer. The children were taken in by the railway worker Ivan Župančič and his wife. Dan’s father asked them from captivity to take him to Zagreb to Olga Rajšek, his brother-in-law’s fiancée. Olga hid Dan until the end of the war.
7. , 8. VERA IN LUDVIK VALENTINČIČ
Ludvik Valentinčič, born in 1917 in Podbrdo in Baška grapa, and his wife Vera saved the ten-year-old daughter of the Pohoryles family in Zagreb. The couple managed to escape from arrest, but they were unable to obtain false documents for Suzana. They turned to the Valentinčič family, who took Suzana as a relative. The Ustashas executed Ludvik and arrested Vera, while Suzana was taken in by Vera’s parents.
9. MARTINA LEVEC MARKOVIĆ
Martina Levec Marković, born in 1922, hid and rescued Jewish illegals Josip and Benjamin Beherano and Danilo Fogl in Zemun for a good month. The house was also home to four German officers who did not know about the hiders. Martina tricked one, that he distracted the Ustashas from the investigation. In 1943 she joined the partisans.
10. RUDIMIR RUDOLF ROTER
Rudimir Rudolf Roter, born in the village of Potomje on Pelješac, saved the Jewish Koen family. He met his journalist colleague Abraham Abo Koen in Sarajevo and invited him and his family to Dalmatia, which was under Italian occupation. The whole village was involved in hiding the Koens. From there the family went to the partisans and to the liberated territory.
11. FRANCE PANČUH
France Pančuh, born in 1902 in Gornji Logatec, was a Yugoslav diplomat and businessman in Warsaw, married to a Jew, Janina Glocer. After the Nazi occupation of Poland, he took care of the safety of his wife and son Andrej and helped many Jewish families by taking over their property and providing them with false documents. He hid many in his apartment. He supplied the Jews in the ghetto with food and bribed the Germans to allow some to escape. He was killed by a stray bullet in the street during the Warsaw Uprising.
12.,13.,14., 15.,16. ALEKSANDER IN AGNES ŽILAVEC, JOŽEF FRATELJ, MARIJA IN FRANC FRATELJ
Ludvik Cigut warned his friend Emerik Hirschl that Jews were being arrested in Murska Sobota. Hirschl was hidden by Andrej Žilavec, born in 1901 from Andrejevci, then betrayed and taken to a camp, from where he escaped during transport and returned home on foot, where he was hidden by the Fartelj family until the end of the war.
17.,18. IN 19. SAVICA, MIHAEL IN EMA ROŽANC
Elizabeta Savica Rožanc, born in 1920 in Ljubljana, saved her protégé Tomaž Zajc. When the Gestapo broke into his parents’ apartment in the middle of the night, she took the child across the balcony to the neighbours and then took him home to her parents, where they hid him until the end of the war. The Nazis took away Tomaž’s parents, uncle, aunt, grandfather and grandmother. The latter were immediately executed in the camp, and the father and mother were taken to the Dachau and Ravensbruck camps. They both survived.
Theatre performance:
AMSTERDAM
Author: Maya Arad Yasur
Translator: Nika Korenjak
Director: Aljoša Živadinov Zupančič
Dramaturge: Nika Korenjak
Stage designers:
Vadim Fiškin and Miran Mohar
Costume designer: Claudi Sovré
Music: Aljoša Živadinov Zupančič
Proofreader: Jože Faganel
Cast:
Nika Korenjak
Luka Bokšan
Borut Doljšak
Timotej Novaković
Coproduction:
Jewish Cultural Center Ljubljana
Mini teater
The dramatic work of the Israeli playwright Maya Arad Yasur is a meta-theatrical rhythmic journey from the cruel regions of the past, which left behind collective guilt and the repression of difference, to the uncertain present. Without a cosmic order, with facts and events, it places us in the role of an observer who indifferently observes the unjust unfolding of the lives of seemingly innocent individuals, so that the justice of a corrupt ideology or a man's egomaniacal rampage for his own ideal may be satisfied. The eruption of hidden stories that had been waiting to be revealed for more than seventy years started happening at the best possible time. In an era when the world order is collapsing, harmful ideologies are rising, capital is deeply rooted before human spiritual needs, empathy is almost non-existent - at this point it is even more important to remember, remind and overcome together.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Maya Arad Yasur (1976) is a dramaturge and playwright. She holds an M.A. in Dramaturgy from the University of Amsterdam where she graduated with distinction. In the years 2007-2012 Maya has been living in the Netherlands, working as a production dramaturge. She has been the dramaturge of several award-winning theatre performances which tour in festivals around Europe. Maya returned to Israel in 2012 and has been working since as a freelance dramaturge and playwright. Her plays have been staged and publicly read in various theatres in Israel, Germany, Austria, Norway and the U.S. and were published in leading theatre magazines in Germany, Poland and Israel. Winner of Theatertreffen Stuckemarkt 2018.
Awards
1st prize of the international playwriting competition of ITI–UNESCO for Suspended (2011) Habima (Israel’s national theatre) prize for emerging playwrights for God Waits at the Station (2014) Theatertreffen’s Stückemarkt prize for Amsterdam (2018).
O REŽISERJU:
In his theater performances, Aljoša Živadinov Zupančič (1996) follows the theme of the absurdity of power relations between individuals, both in micro and macro social structures. Why does evil approach the realm of evil in terms of exclusive decision-making power, and why must we first understand this evil before we can truly bury it once and for all? When we approach the issue of man in this way, we are implicitly always dealing with politics, in the sense of the meaning of politics as "regulating situations and deciding on them in a certain social sphere". However, Živadinov Zupančič does not characterize his developing theater practice as exclusively political or, even better, realpolitik.
All of his performances so far also thematize the social conditioning of gender and the roles that members of a certain gender must play within society. Within all the texts, perhaps written by Ivan Cankar, Odon von Horvath or Nika Korenjak, the authors consciously or unconsciously affirm, but in reality prefer to deny the given expectations that we have towards the Other (gender, race, class). It is precisely these expectations that produce the main points of conflict in and between individuals. They affirm the collective "dox", which in reality only deepens the "simulation gap" between man and the reality of the world. The most we can always do, in the here-and-now, is to realize our helplessness in the struggle with perfection and, nevertheless, on behalf of ourselves, and even better of the community, "fight against our own nature". The thesis that nowadays plays are only staged, not played, is not understood as a crisis of the theater, but rather as a crisis of the play of mimicry itself.
LINKS TO MEDIA PUBLICATIONS AND REVIEWS OF THE PERFORMANCE
Theatre performance:
SEVEN SECONDS ETERNITY
Author: Peter Turrini
Translator: Aljoša Vrščaj
Director: Jean-Claude Berutti
Dramaturge: Diana Koloini
Stage design and costumes:
Rudy Sabounghi
Co-author of costumes: Michael Ross
Composer: Janez Dovč
Proofreader: Jože Faganel
Performed by: Polona Vetrih
Musicians: Janez Dovč, Goran Krmac
Coproduction:
Jewish Cultural Center Ljubljana
Mini teater
A Seven seconds is a duration of the scene in which, for the first time in the history of art cinema, a naked woman appeared. This scene made Hedy Lamarr famous - and perhaps even destroyed her. She was celebrated in Hollywood as the most beautiful woman in the world, but she was also quickly kicked out. She was also the author of important technological inventions, and her invention of Frequency-Hopping is now regarded by some as the forerunner of Wi-Fi, though she was not celebrated at the time. She was an extraordinarily beautiful and highly intelligent woman, but she did not have a happy life. It was shaped by the mass murder of Jews, anti-Semitic Vienna, the insecurity of movie fame, possessive men and deceitful wealth, alcohol and loneliness. Her story, though extraordinary, is also a story about XX century.
LINKS TO MEDIA PUBLICATIONS AND REVIEWS OF THE PERFORMANCE
CEREMONIAL LAYING OF THE STUMBLING STONES - STOLPERSTEINE
On Friday, 2 September 2022, there was a symbolic commemoration with the ceremonial laying of the stumbling stones - stolpersteine in front of the Cukrarna Gallery in Ljubljana of more than 150 Jewish refugees, mostly from Croatia, who were expelled from their homes during the Nazi regime and found temporary safety in Cukrarna in Ljubljana in 1941. From there they were later deported to Italy, many of them taken to concentration camps in Europe where they were murdered.
The ceremony was attended by the Rabbi of the Liberal Jewish Community of Slovenia, Alexander Grodensky, the Cantor of the Munich Synagogue, Nikola David, the Chief Rabbi of Croatia and Montenegro, Moše Prelević, the President of the National Assembly, Urška Klakočar Zupančič, the Vice-Mayor of the Municipality of Ljubljana, Dejan Crnek, historian and curator Dr Blaž Vurnik, actors from the Mini Theatre and the Yiddishpiel Theatre from Israel, as well as ambassadors to Slovenia, representatives of the diplomatic corps and relatives of Holocaust survivors.
