Warsaw

The photo exhibition by Wojciech Wilczyk gave me a good pretext to visit Warsaw. Warsaw, the city that was completely destroyed. Warsaw, the city that resurrected. What gives people the strenght to build a new city upon ruins? My father was in Warsaw when the city went up in flames and was blown up block by block. He was a soldier of the German Wehrmacht, and his unit was in the city during the Warsaw Uprising. He never talked about the war, and I’ll never know what he did. How could he live with the destruction of Warsaw? And how can I?

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A Time Of Gifts: Calendar For Free Download

Hanukkah and Christmas are coming closer – a time of gifts in which I would like to give a present to all who accompanied my trips to Eastern Europe’s Jewish past and present via Facebook and my Vanished World blog: a calendar for 2016, which can be downloaded for free and be produced on your own printer or at an on-line print shop.

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A Summer in Black and White

I was traveling twice to Ukraine during this year’s summer – once in June with my friend Sylvia de Swaan, once in July to support the volunteers of SVIT Ukraine in their work in the Jewish cemetery of Chernivtsi (Czernowitz). It took an unusually long time to develop the black and white films of these two months, to scan them, make a selection and finally work them over. Now this has been completed, and here is a first selection.

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Bukovina in Black and White

So far 2015 was a busy year, four times I have been to Ukraine, once to Romania. For the first time in my life, I feel like I have traveled too much. For months I was not able to edit the black and white photos of my journeys properly. Now I’m happy to be home and finally have time to work on the photos. Here is a selection of black and white images of the journey through Bukovina in April.

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Through Bukovina and Galicia with the Volunteers

Meanwhile, I’m back home and still have to report the latest events of the recent journey. On Friday – our last day in Chernivtsi (Czernowitz) – Arthur and I have been on a day trip through Bukovina and Galicia with the volunteers of SVIT Ukraine. Vashkivtsi, Vyzhnytsia (Wischnitz), Kuty and Kosiv were the places we went to.

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Through the window

Vikno is a Ukrainian village north of Chernivtsi (Czernowitz), near the Dniester River. My friend Halyna originates from this village and yesterday she showed me the place of her childhood. With us were Halyna’s mother and our friends Tetyana and Sergey. Thank you friends!

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Hard-working volunteers, sleepy cats

It’s hot in Chernivtsi (Czernowitz), every day over 30 degrees Celsius. The volunteers of SVIT Ukraine and Action Reconciliation start working in the Jewish cemetery early in the morning to escape the heat. Today they were lucky, in the morning it was cloudy, even some rain came down.

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A missing Center at the Golden Creek

It was the wish of my friend Arthur to go to Horodenka and Zolotyi Potik (Golden Creek) – small towns in Galicia, from which his ancestors came to Chernivtsi (Czernowitz). Today we have been there; a long day trip through the beauty of the Galician summer. An ocean of ​​flowers over which the storks circle. With us was Maxym, a local photographer and journalist, who maneuvered his car bravely around the potholes.

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Voices from the past

Yesterday, my friend Silke drew my attention to a sound installation that was designed by students of Chernivtsi University in the former Synagogengasse (Synagogue Alley, now Anri Barbyusa Street) of Chernivtsi (Czernowitz). It brought voices of the past into the present of the city. Today, the volunteers of Action Reconciliation and SVIT Ukraine have begun their work in the Jewish cemetery.

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