The first oral history project that combines old family pictures with the stories that go with them, Centropa has interviewed more than 1,350 elderly Jews living in Central and Eastern Europe. We are bringing Jewish history to life in ways never done before. We collect record and present the life histories of aged people. Centropa has interviewed more than 220 elderly Jews living in Hungary. During our work we experienced that our old people like to keep in touch, and regularly meet with us. That’s why three years ago, the Centropa Budapest office together with the Centropa Vienna office started to organize bimonthly meetings with our old people, called “Café Centropa”. From time to time the Centropa staff invites these people for a chat and a cup of coffee. The meetings of this year were supported by Claims Conference Foundation. We held these in the Bálint Jewish Community Center and European Youth Centre Budapest.
The first meeting was held on the 24th February 2016 in the Bálint Jewish Community Center. 15 Holocaust survivors participated at the event. We invited young students and their history teachers from three Budapest secondary schools for an open discussion with our Holocaust survivors. We had 15 old and 65 student participants on this meeting. We wanted the elderly to talk about their everyday life, internal relationships within the family, child rearing and family, traditions in families, school and work experience, war experiences. How Jewishness has been perceived in everyday life, how Jews have seen and interacted with their social environment, what cultural stereotypes they have developed about each-other, how Jewish identity has been constructed in cultural and social practices. The meeting was held in the Bálint Jewish Community Center Budapest.
Our second irregular meeting was held on the 27th April 2016 in the Bálint Jewish Community Center. We invited the actors from Golem Jewish Theatre. In 2013 the Centropa Foundation published a special kind of cookbook. It was written in the lager of Lichtenworth by 5 girlfriends, one of them was Hedi Weisz. Why were these recipes never cooked? Why did those friends never meet after the war? How could you survive the XX century? Can you kill with love? What is the hardest to lived with: a yiddishe mamma in early marriage, a concentration camp, communism or the new republic of Hungary. The answer comes in 16 short scenes and 4 courses. For every period of her life we serve you a meal…like it or not! This is the story of Hedi Weisz a young Hungarian Jewish girl, born in 1920 in Budapest and lived until the age of 86.
The third meeting was held on the 27th May 2016 in the European Youth Centre Budapest. We invited students from Hungarian schools, who participated our video making competition named “My town Jewish history”, based on family histories and pictures our holocaust survivors.
We invited young students and their history teachers secondary schools for a „free” chat with our Holocaust survivors. 20 Holocaust survivors participated at the event. Our goal was to bring closer two generations and through the personal communication open a new way of teaching 20th century history from a methodological aspect. The students and the survivors see together the short films. The meetings were really very successful as you can see from pictures (see above). We were surprised about the wonderful atmosphere what we experienced.