Moravian Jews’ “fluidity of identity” in focus at newly opened Brno museum
This week saw the opening of the temporary Moravian Jewish Museum in Brno which offers an exhibition focused on the stories of local Moravian Jews through a variety of authentic objects. The site will operate until the new museum building, designed by renowned Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, is constructed.
The temporary museum is called Malý Mehrin (Little Mehrin) and is located in the spaces of a house on Brno’s Vídeňská street. The curator of the exhibition, Martin Šmok, explains what’s behind the name.
“The big museum will be the real Mehrin. Mehrin is a Yiddish slang word for Moravia among Moravian Jews and it is very similar to Polin which is the word for Poland.”
He says that the museum’s newly opened exhibition has 13 stops, each of which displays an authentic object connected to the Jewish history of Moravia and a clip of testimony from the archive of the USC Shoah Foundation, the largest digital archive of found testimony of survivors of the Holocaust and of other genocides.
The idea behind this exhibit is based off an interjection of several concepts, Mr Šmok says.
“It is serving as a proof of concept that Jewish museums don’t have to be based around collections of silver ritual objects and a narration about how Jews used to live. That Jewish museums can actually deconstruct the political history into individually lived human lives. That is the first thing.
“The second thing is that you can actually build a Jewish museum as a museum of stories rather than just objects.
“Third, we would like to adhere to the thesis that there are many interpretations as to the meaning of the word ‘Jewish’. Especially in Moravia, the fluidity of identity has much more radical expressions than in Bohemia.”
Much of the information gathered by the authors of the exhibition came from sources outside of Czechia, as the country experienced the Holocaust during the Nazi occupation as well as Communist anti-Semitic excesses during the post war period.
Many of the ancestors of the Jews who lived in Moravia and on whom the exhibition is focused therefore now live outside of Czechia. The last section of the exhibition specifically focuses on contemporary Jews from Moravia, something that the curator says is important to highlight as theirs is a continuing story not just a thing of the past.
Lying between Vienna and Poland, Moravia was often the haven for Jews fleeing from persecution in nearby territories, says Martin Šmok.
“The Moravian nobility somehow had much more strength in protecting their Jews, so even when you look at architecture and urbanism, the Jewish ghettos in Moravia had quite a different set up from those in villages in Bohemia because they were usually located close to the seat of power, meaning the palaces of the local nobility.
“In the 19th century something very unique occurred in Moravia – the Jewish communities were granted political self-governance status. That means not only religious self-governance, but Jewish cities also became independent cities with their own power structures. These political communities are the most interesting thing because nothing like this happened in most of Central Europe.”
The temporary museum is also serving as a type of testing ground for the concepts that the curation team is considering for the exhibitions they want to display in the Moravian Jewish Museum in Brno once it is finished, he says.
“So after this exhibition there will also be other ones that will be floating different approaches and of course we are already working at least on the permanent exhibition part in the big Mehrin building.”
Aside from exhibitions, the Little Mehrin will also offer talks, lectures and an associated programme for children.
