Drumming for Bubny 21

Saturday 16 Oct, 5 p.m.

Every year, we have played drums in front of the Prague-Bubny train station in commemoration of the 50,000 citizens who left Prague via the platform at that train station, citizens whose origins were doomed to a different fate – a final solution – than those of their classmates in the elementary school.

On 16 October 1941, the first Prague Jewish transport left by the route now guarded by Aleš Veselý's The Gate of Infinity. The first 5,000 "chosen ones" went to the ghetto in Łódź, Poland. Half of them did not survive the first winter there. On 24 November 1941, the Terezín ghetto was founded.

On 16 October 2021 at 5 p.m., we can collectively express our opinion on the silence that was complicit in the mass murder. It happened, and it can happen again. We trust that you will come to support us and that by our joint efforts we will once again break the silence of general ignorance and our own powerlessness.

The afternoon meeting will be moderated by Bára Hrzánová.
The Tam Tam Batucada drumming orchestra will play its rhythms conducted under the direction of Miloš Vacík. Interludes to the Drumming will feature Jiří Stivín.

This anniversary of the first Prague transport will end with a festive concert in the station hall of the Prague-Bubny station. It will be preceded on the platform of Bubny station by the opening prologue to the exhibition "PAVEL DIAS: Torso - Memories for Tomorrow", which we have prepared for you in the House of the Black Madonna in cooperation with the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague.

THE GALA CONCERT WILL START AT 6:30 p.m.
To start things off, students from the Přírodní škola secondary school will perform poems set to music, poems which boys interned in Terezín published in their magazine Vedem.

One of them was Petr Ginz, who, in his memories, returns to the Holešovice of the First Republic, wandering through the distance, dreaming of a future that was stolen from him...

A programme from the repertoire of Přírodní škola Orchestra:
Remembrance of Prague – Petr Ginz, Linda Langerová
Polar – Petr Ginz, Linda Langerová
What will happen to me? – Unknown author, Vít Novotný
My Country - Hanuš Hachenburg, František Tichý

Songs by the students will be introduced by the school director, František Tichý; together with the founder of the Memorial of Silence project, Pavel Štingl, they will guide you through the concert.

The second part of the concert programme will also be dedicated to the memory of Prague in the 1930s.
Jiří Stivín – flutes, saxophone + Robert Hugo - piano.
The following works will be performed:
Lost Serenades for flute and piano – Emil František Burian
The Metamorphosis of Time – Jiří Stivín
David and Goliath – Jaroslav Ježek
Children's Song No. 6 – Chick Corea

The third part of the musical programme will be dedicated to the composition DIFFERENT TRAINS by the American composer Steve Reich.
This masterful composition, drawing inspiration from the Jewish deportations, has been performed by the well-known Kronos Quartet.
It will be performed in the Station Hall on piano by Denis Szalbot. This young musician, who suffers from Asperger's syndrome and has won numerous awards, represents for the Memorial of Silence one of the groups that the Nazi vision of the future did not include.

Iva Bittová, a Czech violinist, singer and composer is to perform in a concert at Veletržní palác to commemorate liquidation of the so called Theresdienstadt family camp

The Memorial of Silence is pleased to invite you to a musical performance of Iva Bittová that will take place on July 12 at 6 p.m. in the Main Hall at Veletržní palác (Trade Fair Palace). Her music meditation will be dedicated to the memory of the liquidation of the so-called BIIb Theresienstadt family camp in Auschwitz – Birkenau. Free entrance.

The Theresienstadt family camp consisted of a group of Jewish families from the Theresienstadt (Terezín) in Czechoslovakia. Most of the inhabitants of BIIb section who did not die of atrocious conditions were murdered during the camp liquidations on 8 March and 10–12 July 1944. Some 7500 prisoners died, this was the largest mass murder in the history of Czechoslovakia. This liquidation marked the end of false hope given to Jewish families deported to camp since September 1943.

Due to Covid-19 pandemic restrictions it was difficult to organise events in commemoration of March tragic mass murder. Therefore the Memorial of Silence takes this July concert as promising opportunity to return to public space connected to Prague transports.

"Encountering and intertwining with different styles and traditions of different ethnic groups ii a form and reflection of my current musical and personal expression. My musical ideas are based on perceiving and listening to the inner voice and communication with nature. This requires silence, a relaxed mind and a positive atmosphere. All this can then be transferred to a musical free form. Through the listeners I want to send vibrations, new resonances and ideas further into space. The personification of the present at the concert is an important value of a common experience". Iva Bittová

Concert is opening a public dialogue launched by the Memorial of Silence that will commemorate the eighty years since the beginning of Jewish deportations and the founding of the Theresienstadt ghetto. Part of the autumn activities will be for example an exhibition of photographs of the Czech classic photography representative Pavel Dias called Torso, Memories for the Future, organised in cooperation with the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague.

Minister of Culture Lubomír Zaorálek will officially announce the new state-funded organisation the Memorial of Silence at the beginning of the concert. The Memorial of Silence was founded with the main aim to secure reconstruction of the Bubny railway station; this institution will slowly take over the agenda of Bubny Shoah Memorial including its art collections.

The BIIb remembrance is organised by the Monument of Silence in cooperation with the National Gallery in Prague, The Terezín Composers' Institute, the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art and the Jewish Community in Prague. Event is organised under the auspices of the Minister of Culture Lubomír Zaorálek, Councillor for the Culture of the Capital City of Prague Hana Třeštíková and the mayor of Prague 7 Jan Čižinský.

Upon arrival, everyone must prove that one of the following conditions is met:

• Have a negative PCR test not exceeding 7 days old,
• Have a negative POC (so-called antigenic) test not exceeding 72 hours old,
• Have a laboratory confirmation of having recovered from covid-19 disease in the period not longer than 180 days before the day of the event.

Proof of having received the first dose of vaccine against covid-19, at least 22 days before this event, no more than 90 days have passed between the first and second dose and no more than 9 months since the second dose, in the case of a single-dose vaccine, at least 14 days but not more than 9 months must have passed since vaccination.

Starting July 9, everyone with the first dose of the two-dose vaccines still has to have a negative test according to the rules listed above.

In addition, everyone present must have a respirator on at all times without an exhalation valve of min. class FFP2 (KN95 / N95).

Opening of the exhibition of photographs by Pavel Dias: Torso - Memories for Tomorrow

12 October 2021
With the opening of the exhibition of photographs by Pavel Dias, the Memorial of Silence continues its series of cultural events commemorating the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the Jewish deportations from Bohemia.
Photo: Karel Cudlín.

The exhibition devoted to the memory of Vendulka Vogelová and her family has arrived to Jerusalem

https://jerusalem.czechcentres.cz/en/program/druhy-zivot-vendulky-v?locale=en