Koffler Centre of the Arts

Dr. Natalia Romik on Hideouts: The Architecture of Survival

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Tuesday, March 26, 2024, 7 pm

Presented by POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw, Poland, Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies, York University, Toronto, and Koffler Arts

In this illustrated lecture, Natalia Romik presents her artistic tribute to the hiding places that Jews improvised in tree hollows, wardrobes, urban sewers, caves, empty graves, and other precarious locations in their efforts to survive the Holocaust in Poland and Ukraine. Hideouts: The Architecture of Survival both documents and honours their creativity. The results of the research (documentary films, forensic recordings, photographs, documents, and objects found in the hiding places) are juxtaposed with silver castings made at these sites.

Dr. Natalia Romik is a public historian, architect, and artist. Her work focuses on Jewish memory and Holocaust commemoration in Eastern Europe, particularly Poland and Ukraine. She has collaborated as a curator and exhibition designer at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. She is a winner of the 2022 Dan David Prize, the largest prize in the field of history in the world.

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POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews recovers the history and memory of Polish Jews and fights antisemitism and xenophobia. Facing the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, POLIN Museum stands on the site of the Warsaw ghetto and prewar Jewish neighborhood. Winner of the 2016 European Museum of the Year Award, POLIN Museum’s multimedia exhibition presents the 1000-year history of Polish Jews, once the largest Jewish community in the world. For more information, please visit https://www.polin.pl/en

The Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies is Canada’s first interdisciplinary research centre in Jewish Studies, bringing together a vibrant community of scholars and teachers to promote cutting-edge research in the field. For more information, please visit https://www.yorku.ca/cjs/

Koffler Arts is a forum for the presentation and development of contemporary visual art that reflects diverse cultural, material and aesthetic perspectives, generating critical discussions around ideas of our time. For more information, please visit https://kofflerarts.org

Post-Jewish: Shtetl Opatów through the Eyes of Mayer Kirshenblatt, the subject of a temporary exhibition that will open at POLIN Museum in May 2024, at the Toronto Holocaust Museum on March 27th at 7:30 PM

* Link for information & tickets https://torontoholocaustmuseum.org/events/from-shtetl-to-post-jewish-town

* Link to POLIN exhibition https://www.polin.pl/en/postjewish-shtetl-opatow-through-eyes-mayer-kirshenblatt; and,

Ger Mandolin Orchestra on March 28th at 8 pm presented by Ashkenaz and Warsaw’s POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews

* Link for information & tickets https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/the-ger-mandolin-orchestra-w-marcin-masecki-tickets-815854632167

Dr. Natalia Romik on Hideouts: The Architecture of Survival

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