“Hesed Shpira” wants to create a museum in the basement of the main stage of the region, the Philharmonic is against it

Today, in the premises of the Charitable Fund "Hesed Shpira", there was a roundtable "Preservation of Memory" as part of the festival of Jewish culture "Heymish Ungvar", the prozahid reports. Neither representatives of the authorities, nor historians, nor social activists came to the meeting, although the round table organizers considered this event one of the most important ones at the festival.

The main topic of the meeting was the idea of ​​creating in Uzhgorod a museum of history and culture of Jews in Transcarpathia. Community members have already developed the project, found interested international funds willing to finance the creation of a modern multimedia museum, but still can not agree on the main issue – the location of the museum.

The director of the "Hesed Shpira" Mykhailo Galin said that the Jewish community would like to make a museum in the basement of the former synagogue, now Philharmonic. They say there are spacious rooms there that are not being used. They sent the request to the RSA, it established a working group, but at the first meeting of this group, the officials, according to Mr. Galin, openly said: the museum is needed, but it cannot be in the Philharmonic. Employees of the Philharmonic for some reason are afraid that the Jews are going to take away the concert hall from them and they will lose their jobs.

Mykhailo Galin convinces that nobody is going to take the premises from the Philharmonic, it’s just that this building is perfect for creating a museum of Jewish history and culture in Transcarpathia. They want to recreate the pre-war view of the Uzhgorod street, where Jews lived and traded, exhibit a huge amount of stored artifacts, develop an interesting multimedia exhibition using video and audio. In order to come to the understanding with the officials, Mykhailo Galin proposes to include to the working group tourism experts, historians and civic activists. After all, along with the issue of creating a museum, it is necessary develop concrete steps to save the Philharmonic building itself.