Public Conversation on a Holocaust Memory Site

events Programme

On September 19, 2025, Marom concluded its three-part series Memory Sites with the final program, Memory Sites 3: From the Ghetto Memorial Wall to the exhibition 1945 – Which Way Forward?. The event combined a guided walk, an exhibition tour, and a public discussion to explore how Holocaust memory is embedded in Budapest’s urban and cultural landscape.

The program began at the Budapest Ghetto Memorial Wall, where Dr. Gabriella Dohi, cultural researcher and journalist, introduced participants to the site’s historical and symbolic layers. Her talk traced the evolution of the ghetto’s memory in public space and reflected on the complex processes of remembering and forgetting within the city.

Participants then continued with a short walk from the Dohány Street area to the 2B Gallery, with a stop at the Király Street tram stop — itself a marker of wartime and postwar transformation in the Jewish Quarter.

At 2B Gallery, curator Zsófia Farkas guided the group through the exhibition 1945 – Which Way Forward?, organized jointly by the Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives and 2B Gallery. The exhibition, commemorating the 80th anniversary of 1945, focused on the first moments of rebuilding Jewish life after the Holocaust in Budapest and the Hungarian countryside. Through a selection of artworks and archival documents, it illuminated the emotional and social landscape of survival — the paralysis, loss, and tentative renewal that defined the immediate postwar years.

The two visited sites — the Ghetto Memorial Wall and 2B Gallery — complemented each other as spaces of remembrance and reflection. Their juxtaposition provided participants with a site-specific understanding of how memory is both anchored in physical places and reinterpreted through contemporary artistic practice.

Attendance for the event was limited and required prior registration, reflecting the broad public interest in the program. Overall, Memory Sites 3 lasted three hours and engaged participants in dialogue about remembrance, community, and resilience.

The Memory Sites series as a whole aimed to foster critical reflection, encourage dialogue, and strengthen community engagement around questions of Holocaust remembrance — in Hungary and beyond.

📸 Andrea Ausztrics, Rahel Papp