Jewish Heritage -- New Resources

Old Jewish Cemetery, Roudnice nad Labem, CZ. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The Bratislava Seminar provided the opportunity for representatives of various countries to present new printed or web resources on Jewish heritage, and in particular new maps, brochures and other material related to Jewish tourism and itineraries.

I try to keep track of these, but I generally can't keep up with the amount of material being published.

I have listed some of the web resources that were highlighted at the conference in the links list and travel resources list on this blog.

Other material presented includes:

-- Jewish Sights in the Usti Region (Czech Republic)

A very elaborate package of high-quality illustrated brochure, CD and DVD detailing Jewish sights in northern Czech Republic, including Decin, Libochovice, Louny, Most, Roudnice nad Labem, Teplice, Terezin, Ustek, and Zatec. In all these places, Jewish heritage sites have been restored or are undergoing restoration as part of local heritage. The material was written by my old friend Jaroslav Klenovsky, one of the pioneers of Jewish heritage research in CZ, and produced with funding from the EU and Usti regional authorities.

Jaroslav was one of several Czech representatives at the Bratislava meeting. The Czech Jewish community, through its Matana property management organization, has been a leader in developing -- and implementing -- a viable longterm strategy in Jewish heritage site preservation and management. This has included forging partnerships with local civic and private bodies as well a foreign donors, and working out a strategy of restoration of Jewish sites for cultural use including Jewish museums. In addition, numerous publications have been issued. (By the way, I linked in a recent post to a downloadable new brochure guide on Czech Jewish heritage put out by the Czech Tourism Office. Since then, the link seems to have been removed, though the brochure still exists in print... the Czech Tourism web site now had a page with links to several Jewish sites around the county -- click HERE.)

-- "Permanent Yiddishkeit" -- Jewish Heritage Map of Belarus

-- Jewish Latvia -- Travel Guide

-- Slovak Jewish Heritage Route -- new brochures