| The Touring Exhibition |
|
|
The Girls from Room 28, L 410, TheresienstadtWith a Foreword by Professor Yehuda Bauer, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem The exhibition opened in Schwerin, Germany on September 23rd, 2004, as part of the third international competition “Verfemte Musik” [Ostracised Music], initiated by Volker Ahmels, chairman of the Jeunesses Musicales, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Eight of the “girls from Room 28”—now living in the US, Israel, Austria and the Czech Republic—accepted the invitation to Schwerin and contributed to a vivid program. The event included a soirée titled “Hommage à Brundibár,” a reading from the book, and many encounters with young students whom the women guided through the exhibition in the Schleswig-Holstein-Haus. Since then the panels were shown throughout Germany. A Czech version of the exhibition opened November 26th, 2006 in Brno, in the new branch of the Jewish Museum Prague. The thirty panels illustrate the fate of the “Girls from Room 28," whose lives contain the seeds of the coming tragedy. The focal point is Room 28—an island in a raging sea. The viewer learns about the everyday lives of the children, their clandestine classes, their playing and singing. By walking through the exhibition, the visitor also gets a feeling for the prevailing fear of transport. At the same time, one encounters an unusual community that founded the “Maagal” and created a flag, a motto, and a hymn. The clearly-structured panels touch a sympathetic chord, particularly in young people, and thus convey a sorrowful chapter of contemporary history from a biographical perspective as well as from an historical point of view. Yet, the exhibition’s most distinctive quality is that it reveals the elementary significance of friendship, art, culture, and humane values. It is this aspect that makes of the story an issue of vital importance for today’s world. For the survivors, the book and the exhibition fulfil the promise they made not to let their murdered friends be forgotten, and to acknowledge the efforts of the adults in their community to rescue the children from moral relativism or, as the Zionist youth-leader Fredy Hirsch put it: “The attempt had to be made to rescue the children from the devaluation of what is good.”
Example: Exhibition panels 1-7 as PDF Download (845 KB) (You’ll need the free Adobe Reader® to view these. If you don’t already have it, click here go to the Adobe download website.) Report on the exhibition broadcast by TV Emscher-Lippe on March 17, 2006: > ISDN
Technical Data The German version of the exhibition is made up of twenty-one DIN A0 panels (84.1 x 118.9 cm, portrait format) and nine DIN A3 panels, while the Czech version is extended to 23 DIN A0 panels. The panels are framed, protected by safety-glass, and can be hung from picture mounting rails or on stable moveable walls.
The planned English version The German and the Czech versions were made on a limited budget, and hence do not show the full scope of what was originally intended. Therefore, we hope that for the English version, we will be able to produce the exhibition according to its original concept; in particular, we would like to include more aspects and to add objects, documents, and audio-and video-stations.
Credits and Thank you The German version was supported by the “Fonds Erinnerung und Zukunft” (Remembrance and Future); the Czech version was made possible by a donation of Dr. Alfred Bader, USA.
Renate Schlicht and Walter Hagenow, Frankfurt a. M.
Benedikt Burkard, Frankfurt a. M.
Idea, Conception, Management @Hannelore Brenner-Wonschick, Berlin, 2004, 2006 If you want to contact Room 28 Projects, click here: h.wonschick@room28projects.com
top of page |
