Between the Ditches and Ramparts [screening + discussion]

A screening of Viktor Portel's short documentary Between the Ditches and Ramparts (2024, Czech with English subtitles), followed by a discussion with Michael Simonson, Head of Public Outreach and Archivist at the Leo Baeck Institute.

No place in Czechia bears the imprint of the Holocaust as deeply as Terezín. In the film, a lone traveler wanders through its streets, encountering residents who would rather leave the past behind. As the former ghetto fades from living memory, the town has become a ghost town — and the film asks what its desolate present reveals about our broader relationship to Jewish history and remembrance.

Presented in connection with the Leo Baeck Institute's exhibition Hidden in Plain Site: The Secret Photo Album of Theresienstadt, on view through December 31, 2026 — the first U.S. presentation of a rare private photograph album preserved by a Theresienstadt inmate, containing the first known surviving images of the ghetto not produced for propaganda purposes.