Jawne Memorial and Educational Centre

Since 2006, the Yavneh Learning and Memorial Centre has been initiating and supporting new research projects on the history of what was the only Jewish grammar school in today’s North Rhine-Westphalia until the ‘Albert-Einstein-Gymnasium’ (grammar school) was founded in Düsseldorf in 2016. The main focus of the research project consists of exchanges with former Yavneh pupils from all over the world, and with their children and grandchildren. The results of this research are being implemented in exhibitions, seminars and lectures, and in educational work with children and young people.

The exhibition entitled Kindertransporte aus NRW (Kindertransports from North Rhine-Westphalia) was the first exhibition to be put online in 2010. From 2017, the exhibition can be found here in a revised version in German and English.

Since 2017, an extensive exhibition conceived by Wolfgang Richter, called LEFTOVERS – Memories of Jewish people who once lived in Cologne is online. The website consists of filmed interviews with former pupils from the Yavneh School in Israel and New York. There are video clips, documents, photos and explanatory texts which can be accessed according to links with people and themes. The exhibition is presented in both German and English.

In 2007, there was already a touring exhibition called Never again Carnival Monday – Portraits and Documents of former pupils from the Jewish Yavneh Grammar School who were rescued, curated by Wolfgang Richter working together with the Courage Youth Club, a registered association in Cologne. Eight large portraits show men and women who now make Israel their home. Short biographies present the stories about how they were rescued and other significant moments from their lives. The exhibition with English and German texts has been shown several times at the Yavneh Learning and Memorial Centre, and anyone is welcome to borrow it.

Another exhibition which can be borrowed is the one called The Brauns and the Grünebaums, which was produced in 2008 within the framework of a project seminar at the Heinrich-Heine University in Düsseldorf. This tells the story of the Lützowstraße Jewish Municipal ‘Volksschule’ in Cologne, and also the fate of the families of the Braun and Grünebaum teachers, whose sons Walter and Heinz remained friends for the rest of their lives.

In 2013 we were able to put on a large exhibition for the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the Kindertransports in the LVR Landeshaus in Cologne. The title of the exhibition was taken from a telegram written by Erich Klibansky in which he announced the first Yavneh Kindertransport: Children leave at 17.13. Memories from the Polenaktion and the Kindertransports of 1938/9 The previously almost unknown story about the Kindertransports from Zbaszyn in Poland also sheds light on the ‘prologue’ to the Kristallnacht: the expulsion of Jews from Poland in October 1938. Since 2017 the exhibition is available online in German and English. (URL.www.kindertransport-17uhr13.de)