Framework

Difficult Heritage Remembrance Framework

Focalized in-depth approach is a strategy of approaching a given site as a stand-alone case study aimed at exposing all its historical and topographical layers. It helps to forefront all the complexities of a difficult heritage site – not reducing them to a given historical moment that makes it a difficult heritage site, but to […]

Practices of care are small gestures that stakeholders might be encouraged to take in relation to the site. It is an example of a community-engagement strategy in which stakeholders contribute to the change in the local memory culture by participating in marking of a site or improving its condition it (e.g. through cleaning, landscaping and […]

Green commemorations are a new approach to remembrance in public spaces centered around environmental sustainability (use of landscaping, local materials and technology in the service of ecology), accompanied by high quality interventions (artistic excellence, quality of architecture and spatial planning, strong scientific underpinning) and following the principle of social inclusion (proposing community-based processes mediated through […]

Practice-oriented research describes a research based-approach to dealing with difficult heritage sites in which various forms of research are conducted before and during commemorative activities happening at the site. This includes archival and historical research, non-invasive field research, social research, audience research and more. This is not a new approach in and of itself, however […]

Artistic intervention is a situation when an artist or a group of artists interacts with a given site, a space or a situation. In the context of this document, this describes an approach in which an artist or an artistic collective is invited to make a public-facing intervention into a difficult heritage site that can […]

Context The area of the former KL Plaszow German Nazi concentration camp in Krakow, founded on top of two Jewish cemeteries, remains today largely unmarked, while functioning primarily as a recreational site. Local residents often enjoy outdoor walks in this area, oftentimes with their dogs, although usually without full conscience of what was previously located […]

Context Wrocław, formerly called Breslau was part of Germany before World War II and was home to one of the largest German Jewish communities in Central Europe. Decimated by the war and the enormous upheavals following the shift of borders (with Breslau becoming Wrocław and becoming Polish), the pre-war Jewish history of the city was […]

Context The site of KL Plaszow in Kraków, a former concentration camp founded on top of two Jewish cemeteries, today serves primarily as a public park and recreation area, without sufficient information about the site’s history and topography. The performance, Still Standing, was first created as a response to heated debates surrounding the potential forms […]

Context The area of the former German Nazi concentration camp Plaszow in Krakow, originally established on top of two Jewish cemeteries, remains largely unmarked today and functions primarily as a recreational site. Local residents often enjoy outdoor walks in this area, often bringing their dogs, usually without a full understanding of what was previously located […]

Durational & repetitive practices are a good way forward for sites where there are conflicting visions and perspectives on the site or where architectural development is impossible (e.g. because of ownership issues). Rather than focusing all the efforts on finding a permanent solution (e.g. an architectural design of a memorial) that can be accepted by […]

This typology of difficult Jewish heritage sites was developed on the basis of existing research and consulted with various experts in the course of the project. material remains of the infrastructure of genocide – former death and concentration camps, former labor camps, burial sites of the victims of the Holocaust – including those un-commemorated and […]

Context In the town of Chrzanów there is a place that used to be called Esther’s Square, where the Great Synagogue stood until its demolition in the 1970s in Communist Poland. A weeping willow (White Willow) was planted there sometime later, which became part of the local landscape until it was unexpectedly cut down in […]

Context Central and Eastern Europe is heavily covered with the forgotten graves of Jews murdered during WWII in what came to be known as the Holocaust by bullets. Its victims rest in unmarked graves in forests, roadside ditches and fields. While the exact locations of these nameless graves and the number of victims resting in […]

Prototyping is a word usually associated with programming and developing technology products. However, it can be useful in dealing with difficult heritage as well. Prototyping is an experimental process in which design teams test ideas by implementing them on a small scale for the purpose of checking if they work as intended and respond to […]