Jewish Nesvizh – honouring a lost community and inspiring a living legacy
Jewish Nesvizh – honouring a lost community and inspiring a living legacy
7pm GMT, 9pm Israel, 10pm Belarus, 2pm EST, 11am PST
Missed this talk? No worries! Please email us at [email protected] to place an order for the recording. This was a paid event with the ticket income going towards the Nesvizh memorial campaign. We are kindly requesting that you make a donation of your choosing when ordering the recording which will go towards the campaign. Donation details will be provided. Thank you
Can’t make it live? Don’t worry, the event will be recorded, and all registered participants will receive the recording.
This is the first of a three part series of Jewish Nesvizh.
Join us for an unforgettable talk exploring the extraordinary story of the Jewish community of Nesvizh, once a vibrant centre of Jewish life in Belarus. Through centuries, Nesvizh’s Jewish residents contributed richly to the town’s cultural, social, and economic life until their world was destroyed during the Holocaust.
This engaging presentation will bring the history of Jewish Nesvizh to life and will also introduce an inspiring new campaign to create a unique and powerful memorial in Nesvizh, a work of art and remembrance that will celebrate the life, culture, and spirit of the Jews who once called the town home.
Join us to uncover the hidden story of Nesvizh’s Jewish past, learn how it connects to Jewish heritage today, and find out how you can be part of building a legacy that ensures this history is never forgotten.
About the speakers:
Debra Brunner, co-founder and CEO of The Together Plan, has spent over 16 years advancing Jewish community development and cultural heritage work in Belarus. Having lived in the USA and travelled widely in Belarus, she is a committed advocate for Jewish history, heritage, and identity. She also founded the Jewish Tapestry Project (a 501(c)(3) in the U.S.). Through her leadership, she has worked tirelessly to empower Jewish people emerging from a traumatic past, helping them gain agency, skills, and confidence. Guided by her belief that “together we can make a real and positive difference,” she is dedicated to building a stronger, more cohesive Jewish landscape in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
Tamara Vershitskaya, based in Belarus, is a researcher, translator, founder and Curator of the Jewish Resistance Museum (JRM) in Novogrudok (Belarus) and is the Jewish Heritage Specialist at The Together Plan. In 2007 Tamara created a permanent exhibition on the former ghetto site called ‘Jewish Resistance Museum’ telling two stories of the most successful Jewish resistance in the Nazi occupied Europe. One of them – the story of the Bielski partisans – is widely known thanks to a Hollywood movie ‘Defiance’. Ever since the JRM has been gradually developing into a Memorial Museum with an indoor and outdoor exhibition, two very special Gardens, a Memorial Wall and preserved fragments of the tunnel built by the ghetto prisoners.
Steve Stein, President of the Jewish Genealogical Society of New York, is a retired software professional and manager in the telecommunications industry. He has been researching his own and his wife’s genealogies for more than 45 years, whose origins include Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Ukraine, and Romania. He has volunteered for JewishGen’s Belarus and Hungary Research Divisions and the JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry, and manages the KehilaLinks site for Nyasvizh, Belarus and Kupil, Ukraine (in development). He has spoken at Jewish Genealogy conferences as well as to several groups in the New York area.
Artur Livshyts was born in Minsk and spent part of his childhood in Nashville, Tennessee, where after growing up in the Soviet Union he first discovered Judaism. While in the United States he studied Hebrew and celebrated his bar mitzvah, marking the beginning of his deep connection to Jewish life. He later spent a year in an Israeli boarding school before returning to Minsk, where he completed his education in Human Rights Law. Inspired by his early experiences and determined to help revive Jewish life in Belarus, Artur has dedicated his career to strengthening and rebuilding community. In 2009 he met Debra Brunner, and together they founded The Together Plan UK charity to support Jewish community development and heritage work in Belarus. In 2023, Artur was appointed Chairman of the Jewish Religious Union of Belarus, continuing his mission to nurture a vibrant Jewish future in the region.
This event is part of our campaign to install two new memorials in Nesvizh, one in memory of the contribution that the Jewish community made to the town of Nesvizh and the second to mark the area that is the Jewish cemetery which is today a public park.
The Together Plan
preserving the past, building the future, changing lives for the better!
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