Picking up the Pieces
Jewish exhibition at the Museum of Ethnography
MúzeumCafé 48.
The exhibition Picking up the Pieces: Fragments of Rural Jewish Culture opened last October in the Museum of Ethnography. Although it was prepared in connection with the 70th anniversary of the Holocaust, the display does not deal directly with the Shoa, rather with the period preceding it. The exhibition covers the most important elements of Hungary’s Jewish culture, the different ways Jews and Gentiles lived together, and the most important characteristics of the pre-World War II era. The bulk of the material on display comes from the museum’s own collection and, with a few exceptions, has never before been exhibited in public. Indeed, the institute’s Jewish holdings have never been subject to careful review and study. The display presents a small but important collection of Judaica, objects used by the Jewish community, objects obtained from dealers and private collectors, as well as Jewish-related photographic material. Most of the approximately 100 items came to the museum in the early 1910s, thanks to a Jewish art dealer, Gyula Grünbaum, who augmented its collection with about 1000 items of folk art. In terms of objects, with two exceptions material from the Museum of Ethnography has been used, while the photographs have been assembled with the help of the rich, family history photographic material of the Centropa Foundation, as well as photographs from other institutes. Picking up the Pieces as an exhibition has adopted its own way of remembering – providing a picture of pre-Holocaust rural Hungarian Jewry on the basis of the museum’s material. Primarily local ‘case studies’ illustrate the everyday life of Jews, their position in the majority society, certain characteristics of their culture, and the impact of both tradition and modernity.