Points of reference. Co-creation of wooden matzevas with the local community

The Zapomniane Foundation project consists of five workshops for youth aged 14-17 bringing together new technologies with traditional crafts, local history and Holocaust education. They will be carried out in five localities where Jewish communities lived before the war, and where unmarked, uncommemorated burial places are found. The joint creation during the workshops of wooden matsevahs and the marking of the graves aims to bring the local community into the process of commemorating these places. For this purpose the Zapomniane Foundation, in collaboration with the Creative Coding Lab at SWPS University, created its own portable device, using a laser and proprietary software, allowing the creation of inscriptions on wooden matsevahs in the field, during workshops, both according to the traditional design of the inscription used by the Foundation and according to designs by workshop participants (e.g. handwritten designs by children or youth). Additionally, workshop participants get to know the local history of the Holocaust and are introduced to the basic of woodworking and using the laser, after which they jointly design and make the wooden markers for burial sites.