One of the very few surviving artefacts connected to my grandfather's family is this photograph, dated 7 February 1939. It was taken in the dining room at Charlottenstraße 22, not long before Frank left for England on the Kindertransport. On the reverse he wrote: This is the last picture of our family that I have got. Taken two months before I left. On the left are myself, my mother, my sister and…

Beginning in 2024, the Moors for the Future Partnership, in conjunction with Bradford Council, Rebel Restoration and Friends of Ilkley Moor (FoIM), has undertaken restoration work on Ilkley Moor to restore peatland and improve flood and wildfire resilience. This work has involved the installation of hundreds of stone, timber, coir and heather dams to stem the flow of water from the moorland. The p…

Over a couple days last summer I made high-resolution scans of 30 reflective document mats attached to the A3 and A4 Epson scanner lids at Leeds Arts University. I believe this accounts for almost all of the scanners at LAU that had mats installed on their lids, across the Mac Suites and various studios throughout the building. On the few occasions a scanner was inoperable, I removed the mat and i…

There's a misconception among those with only a casual interest in Jewish heritage in Poland: that when a property is restored to a Jewish community through the Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland, its preservation is thereby assured and it will be developed in a manner befitting its historical and cultural significance. Such views ignore the stark economic realities and tensions inher…

I learned today that my great-grandmother Else's elderly mother, Clara Hirschel (née Goldstein), was interned alongside her daughter and son-in-law at the transit camp I visited in Rybna (formerly Reibnig). Clara was a member of the prominent Goldstein family, several of whom moved from Kattowitz to Breslau in the mid-19th century. I'd previously found her husband's name on the Goldstein family to…