Behind The Façade

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Behind The Façade is a performance that tells the stories of the people who stayed at Camp Westerbork during World War II. From 1942 to 1945, the transit camp on the Drentse heath was the departure point for more than 107,000 Jews, Sinti and Roma who were deported from here to death camps in the East. Only 5,000 were able to recount this.


Camp Westerbork was special because of the ‘make-believe reality’ that was created there; although the camp’s residents appeared to be able to continue a normal life in some respects, life there was also marked by fear and the uncertainty of the approaching transport. Amid this smoke screen, music sounded. Behind The Façade reflects on this duality and revives some of the stories of Westerbork. 
 
Following the previous Theatre after Dam performances, It’s Our Boys and Free and Fixed, this year Garage TDI’s pre-training department is working with a larger group of young actors and in collaboration with the Noord Nederlands Orkest (NNO) as part of Theatre of Remembrance. The performance is the result of an intensive research process, during which the makers carefully studied the stories of the camp residents together with the players. This collaboration between young theatre makers and professional musicians brings some of the stories of the victims and the events in the camp to life on the historic site itself.

Photo by DAYS.

Like Underwater

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What thought or question starts the feeling that something is wrong? At what moment do you turn this thought into action? In this performance, we will explore what resistance is, how small it can stay, or how big it can grow, and what happens when you only watch? 

They will talk to to survivors about Amsterdam women who were part of the resistance during the Second World War. What kind of community and combined forces were used to keep a child safe at this time? This performance looks at the position of women during that time; what their limitations were, and also how women were able to take advantage of the fact that they were often underestimated because of their gender.

Through this performance the National Holocaust Museum will explore these topics and ask; What courage or fear may lie within ourselves to feel when something is not right and to say or do something when necessary?

Photo by Hilde Harshagen.

Three miracles

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In this video, we are introduced to Mr. Eugeniusz, who tells his story as a witness of World War II and an inmate in an extermination camp. He was born in 1928 and this video was made when he was 93 (a year before his death). He held on, although the circumstances were dramatic.

The video can be viewed here.

After Memories

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They say: “one picture, a thousand words.” Artists from Theatre Brama, together with the youngest workshop group of the theatre, created a short video artwork inspired by the memories of senior citizens in WW2. In this video, you can see strong abstract images and small poetic scenes as a reflection but also as a comment of the artists and the kids on the memories of the senior citizens.

Deragliamenti / Derailment

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The performance is inspired by the forced path traced by a track: the constraint of the journey for those who are deprived of freedom or choice, sometimes even of knowledge. The aim is to explore how this image resonates in our present through witnesses stories and youngsters ideas.

Tracks are perhaps a more abstract image in our present history but can have real impact when they translate a way of thinking or acting, not allowing alternatives or contradictions, imposing separation and exclusion.

Reflecting on tracks can help to imagine a precise path and the possibility of derailment: a change, a transformation.

Deragliamenti will take place inside Museo diffuso della Resistenza e della Deportazione in Torino: a guided tour mixed with the youngsters performance.

Petit déjeuner a l’atelier

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Seven young people gather in studio Marcel Hastir, the place where a boycott on the 20th train convoy was planned during World War II. Accompanied by the jazz of Holocaust survivor Simon Gronowski, the youngsters stage their dreams and nightmares about freedom, imprisonment, not belonging, and portray the story of young Simon, who jumped off the train to Auschwitz and was able to escape imprisonment and death.

N. 860 10

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Youngsters from Bratislava tell the story of three women that survived labour camps. In these stories we uncover inhumane conditions and the struggle for life of mother, daughter and sister during the second World War. The stories of three women whose will to live was greater than anything else…

Safe space

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Where do you feel yourself protected? With whom? In the wild or in a sealed space? What things surrounds you? Where is your home?

17 teenagers from Budapest researched what safety means to them. The starting points were personal memories of five ladies who survived the holocaust. Through those conversations, the youngsters ended up questioning their contemporary mental environment. 

We are memory 2024

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Each edition of ‘We Are Memory’ by Memory of Nations Theatre in Prague showcases diverse art genres, from drama via dance to fine art. This year’s performance is a collaboration with students from Charles University’s Department of Art Education, blending visual installations, video art, acting, and dance.

The venue, Fair Trade Palace (Headquarters National Gallery in Prague), holds poignant historical significance as a Nazi assembly point for victims before deportations to concentration camps. Students encountered powerful stories of individuals whose life experiences offer insights into dark chapters of history. Some of them have integrated visual arts into their professional lives, such as academic painter Helga Hošková-Weissová (1929) and graphic designer Jana Dubová (1926). This duo is complemented by a doctor of natural sciences Michaela Vidláková (1936), Czech historian Toman Brod (1929) and the renowned dance choreographer and former artistic director of legendary Laterna Magika Theatre, Zdeněk Prokeš (1956). When meeting with the students, all of these survivors mentioned how lucky they were to have stayed with their mother, to have found love, to have survived, and this inspired us to name the performance „Luck“, emphasizing that not everyone had it.

The performance is produced with the support of the State Culture Fund of the Czech Republic, the Holocaust Victim Endowment Fund, Prague City Hall, Theater Na de Dam, National Gallery in Prague, Art re Use, Charles University – Department of Art Education. 

The unforgettable story

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We would like to invite you to the performance of a group acting within the Theatre of Remembrance project – a series of etudes based on conversations between young people involved in the project and senior citizens – witnesses of the Second World War.

The stories of Mrs. Ela, Mrs. Basia, Mr. Bolesław and Mr. Eugeniusz – personal, moving, unusual, sometimes surprising – were an inspiration and starting point for the group to reflect and find analogies between the past and present times. What kind of world do we want to live in and what kind we don’t want to live in? What problems do young people think are important in today’s world? What do we have to face up to so that what the witnesses of history experienced never happens?

This will be a showing of the movie of last years performance that will be accessable online.

Shelters and escapes

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How we can deal with the history through the 2nd World War? How we can get in touch with stories of our grandparents? Do we know enough about history? In ‘Shelters and escapes’ youngsters from Slovakia tell five stories, chosen from the online archive of Post Bellum. Five stories that are connected with their hometown, Nitra. The protagonists lived here or were hidden here. The performers imagine their lifes and feelings. What did they think when they were the same age as the performing youngsters are now?

What about tomorrow?

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The performance ‘What about tomorrow?’ will compare two different times, two ways of being young and waiting for the future, with fears, hopes, uncertainties and dreams.

“And what about tomorrow?” asks a boy in 1943, leaving his city under the bombs as a refugee.

“And what about tomorrow?” a girl asks herself in 2023, while tomorrow has become today, the bombs are still ringing and great is the uncertainty about the future.

The characteristics of these different times emerge both in the interviews with witnesses and in the dreams of today’s young people.

What was and what could be the reaction to the war, or to other collective events that upset daily life, subvert habits and priorities? There’s a sense of helplessness but also new resources, inventions and unexpected situations.

Tomorrow will come, dreaming it better will help build it.

Road 19

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We Are Memory: Road 19 is a play directed by Tamara Pomoriški, Art Director of the Memory of Nations Theatre, which is produced annually in cooperation with Theater Na de Dam in the Netherlands. This year marks the fifth edition of the performance. Each edition has its own theme and unique environment. This year, it is the Romani Holocaust, which is interpreted through the artistic medium of dance and motion theatre.

The true stories of witnesses are told by 14 final-year students from the Prague Conservatoire, and their artistic medium is solely dance and the voice of the performer Ridina Ahmed. The artists decided to present the bitter subject of the Romani Holocaust in a gallery exhibition hall open to the public. Thus, the dancers themselves become exhibits, bidding viewers to give thought on their own perception of racism and the extent to which this issue is still current in society. The abstract sounds and environment do not distract the viewers’ attention, allowing them to consider whether they, too, might not be dividing society into “us” and “them”.

The script draws directly from the testimonies of historical witnesses. In previous years, young people welcomed the witnesses in Post Bellum’s offices. For this year, on 19 November the students headed outside of Prague for the first time. Their meetings were hosted by the Museum of Romani Culture in Brno and the Holocaust Memorial in Hodonín u Kunštátu. The students also explored the institutions’ exhibitions, which present this tragic aspect of our modern history. In Brno, the students met with Rudolf Murka (1959) and Antonín Lagryn (1947). Both of them are second-generation witnesses – their parents survived the concentration camps in Auschwitz and Ravensbrück. Mr Murka’s mother found asylum in Slovakia, which saved her from being deported. The memorial in Hodonín u Kunštátu commemorates the time when whole Romani families were interned there. Day-to-day operations of the camp were also observed by then-10-year-old František Němec (1932). Even 80 years later, he still has vivid memories of the humiliating arrival process, the inhuman work conditions, and the typhus epidemic that decimated the inhabitants of the camp, especially the children.