Weimar, March, 1st, 2022 The European Heritage Volunteers Network and its partners throughout Europe express their stern condemnation about the violent and irrational aggression caused by the Russian state against Ukraine. The European Heritage Volunteers Network and its partners stand in absolute solidarity with the population and the civil society in Ukraine, especially with our partners and friends in the country, who are currently enduring the unbearable onslaught of a senseless war that...

Hello, I am Tobias. I'm doing a voluntary social year at Hillersche Villa and so I had the chance to participate in the second part of the project in this year.

Volunteers from more than ten European countries were interested in Jewish life in Zittau and the surrounding area. The aim of the MAZEWA workcamp was to visualize the former mouring hall at the Jewish cemetery Zittau.

The MAZEWA / European Heritage Volunteers Project "Innovative interpretation of Jewish cultural heritage" started off on Monday. Twelve participants from eleven different countries explored the Jewish cemetery of Zittau for the first time. Using sticky notes, they marked spots that sparked their interest or that they had questions about.

The tombstone of Michaelis and Therese Glaser (née Wertheim) is one of the more eccentric mazewot at the Jewish cemetery in Zittau. With its curved shape, unusually shaped star of David and floral ornaments it stands out from the other, more simple tombstones. Therese and Michaelis Glaser belonged to the first generation of Jews that settled in Zittau. Michaelis was the first chairman of the Jewish community after it was founded in 1885. They had a son, Fritz, and a daughter, Clara. Fritz...

In March, Uri Faber (Moses-Mendelssohn-Akademie Halberstadt), María Paula O‘Donohoe Villota (European Heritage Volunteers, Madrid) and Karen Kiss (European Heritage Volunteers, Budapest) chatted with Anne Kleinbauer (MAZEWA, Zittau) about how gravestones tell us more about the life of a community and how the documentation of a cemetery works. They also talked about why it is important to engage young, international people in the preservation of Jewish cultural heritage. Watch the whole...

International women's day was on Monday, but every day it is important to tell the stories of (Jewish) women and how they lived before, during and after the NS regime. On the photo, you can see Marianne Sperling as a young girl, her mother Elsa Gückel, an unidentified boy and Elsa's mother Olga Dienstfertig. Olga was born in Rakovník/Rakonitz in 1876 as daughter of Daniel and Rosa Felix. They came to Zittau, like many other Jewish families, as merchants, and Olga later ran a small textile...

This is Anna. She grew up in East Saxony and finished school last year. Since September, Anna has been doing her voluntary social year at Hillersche Villa in Zittau. She is doing a great job preparing the MAZEWA projects by digitalising all our historic documents on Jewish life in Zittau. This way, it will be easier to use the sources for our virtual tour of the Jewish cemetery. Thank you Anna, and keep up the good work!

It is Chanukka, the festival of lights and miracles. That's why we want to tell the story of Mordka Schwarz, a Holocaust survivor from the region of Kolbuszowa (PL) who first came to Zittau as a Jewish forced labourer. After the liberation of the "Zittwerke" (a subcamp of Gross-Rosen concentration camp) and some very difficult postwar years, Mordka started his own business and married Maria "Mirel" Liebe from Löbau. The couple ran the department store "Kaufhaus Schwarz". For at least 10 years,...