Press Kit
Prof. Karen Frostig, Ph.D., Founding Director
https://www.lockerofmemory.com
Full title
Locker of Memory memorial to the victims of the Jungfernhof concentration camp
Fact Sheet
Founding and Executive Director
Prof. Karen Frostig, Ph.D.
Based in Newton, MA, USA. Holds dual citizenship in the United States and the Republic of Austria
President of NGO
"The Transnational Holocaust Memorial Project"- Ein Verein
für die Errichtung und Erhaltung von Denkmälern in Wien
und Europa
ZVR-Zahl. 409984415
Karen Frostig, Ph.D. President
C/O Dr. Martha Keil
1180 Wien, Staudgasse 3/21
Österreich
Founding date
25 February 2019
Contact
147 Cypress Street Newton, MA 02459, USA +1 617 965 6274
Brief Description
Locker of Memory memorial project for the victims of the Jungfernhof concentration camp is a memorial project dedicated to presenting the history and memory of the Jungfernhof concentration camp in the form of a permanent memorial at the site. In December 1941, four different transports from Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Vienna, and Hamburg brought 3,985 Jews to the Jungfernhof concentration camp, located outside of Riga, Latvia. Encompassing history, memory, and Holocaust education, the project incorporates new forms of witnessing the past. A 3-D tour allows visitors to embark on a virtual tour of the camp and seven addition killing sites for enforced labor and murder. A Naming Memorial is tentatively under development, to be installed at the site in proximity to the recovered mass grave and the foundation stones belonging to the recovered barracks for Jewish inmates.
Combining research with technology, and participatory methodologies with collaborative processes, the Locker of Memory project will represent a 21st century approach to memorialization. The camp’s history as an internment camp, a forced labor camp, a transfer camp, and a killing site, as well as the camp’s recent transformation into recreation park for leisure and relaxation will be addressed within the memorial design.
History of Project
Dr. Karen Frostig’s grandparents were deported to Jungfernhof on December 3, 1941. In 2007, Dr. Frostig visited the Jungfernhof concentration camp, located four miles outside of Riga, searching for any remains of the camp. She found an abandoned, unmarked site, filled with refuse and ruins. She returned in September 10, 2010 to introduce a memorial project to a large Latvian audience comprised of Latvian officials, university professors, and members of the Jewish community. Dr. Frostig presented her proposal to protect the site from further vandalism and to safeguard the memory of the victims. At the time, no one was prepared to pursue the idea. She returned in 2019 to present the Locker of Memory memorial project proposal to Riga’s Eastern Executive Directorate and the Riga City Council. This time, there was interest and a readiness to create a memorial at the site.
Project objectives
· To stimulate interest in Holocaust history and to regard Holocaust memory as an integral component of national
heritage.
· To mark the 80th anniversary of deportations to the east, enabling the history of genocide of
European Jews, performed by mobile killing units (the Einsatzgruppen) to take place in the Baltic States.
· To investigate a range of contemporary approaches to memorial development, dealing with histories of genocide.
· To examine complex issues surrounding strategies of memorialization taking into consideration multiple
perspectives about the past.
· To promote empathy regarding difficult histories, and to champion the structures of memory over forgetting the
past.
Short Description
The project began as an interdisciplinary venture, starting with basic research of a camp without a documented history. Starting in 2021, I worked with Prof, Richard Freund, world renowned Holocaust archeologist and a team of geoscientists to search for one, and possibly two mass graves containing up to 800 bodies. Progress to recover the mass grave continues, with advances posted online. The website features: deportation lists, ongoing research, a 3-D tour, videos, audio recordings, essays, publications, scientific explorations, educational programming, an heirloom project, public interviews, and an assortment of public presentations.
A commemorative event took place at the site in 2023 on Latvia’s Day of Holocaust Remembrance. A multimedia Day of Remembrance event took place at Brandeis University in April, 2024, introducing a Mourning Shroud as commemorative object containing the names of close to 4,000 murdered victims. A groundbreaking ceremony to include survivors, descendant families, Latvian heads of state, ambassadors, mayors and key officials from Germany and Austria is expected to take place at the site, as a precursor to installing a permanent memorial at Jungfernhof. The event will mark the camp’s public transition from an unremembered site to that of a properly memorialized concentration camp, where the dark histories of cruelty and murder are fully integrated into Riga’s present-day public park. Plans for memorial development will follow.
A survivor and descendants group was formed in 2021, meeting monthly on Zoom as a group of more than 60 members, situated in six countries and 14 states in the US.
Audience
The Locker of Memory project concerns Holocaust histories in three countries: Germany, Austria and Latvia. Descendant families typically settled in the US, the UK, and Israel. Twenty-first century Holocaust audiences are likely to represent changing demographics.
The Locker of Memory memorial project is intended to reach diverse audiences with different levels of knowledge about Holocaust history, as an unprecedented genocide of unimaginable proportion. Audiences consist of Holocaust historians, genocide scholars, archivists, scientists, archeologists, museum curators, educators, students/teachers/professors (middle school, high school, college), descendants of Holocaust victims, architects, and memorial artists. City officials and government agencies will also have a vested interest in learning about the project, how it began, its course of development, and steps toward completion.
Project Team
Prof. Karen Frostig, PhD, Founding Director, Artist and Cultural Historian. Professor of Public Art and Art History, Lesley University and Resident Scholar in Holocaust Studies and Public Memory, WSRC, Brandeis University. US/AT
Ilya Lensky, Chief Advisor. Director, Museum “Jews in Latvia, Riga,” LV.
Richards Plavnieks, Ph.D. Chief Historian. Assistant Professor of History, Florida Southern College. US. Author, (2018). Nazi Collaborators on Trial during the Cold War: Viktors Arājs and the Latvian Auxiliary Security Police (The Holocaust and its Contexts). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Laura Jockusch, Historian consultant. Albert Abramson Associate Professor of Holocaust Studies at Brandeis University, US
Joanna Beata Michlic, Cultural historian, consultant. Founder and first Director of HBI (Hadassah-Brandeis Institute) Project on Families, Children, and the Holocaust at Brandeis University; an Honorary Senior Research Associate at the UCL Centre for the Study of Collective Violence; and an Honorary Senior Associate at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) in London, UK. UK
Evan Robins, Historian/Research Coordinator. Bachelor of Arts in Russian Studies, Brandeis University. Graduated summa cum laude with highest honors in Russian Studies. As an undergraduate, he was awarded the Humanities Fellowship, Schiff Fellowship for independent research, and the Dr. Eberhard Frey Prize for excellence in Russian Studies. Received a Master of Philosophy in History, St. Catharine’s College, University of Cambridge, UK. US
Kabren Levinson, Strategic Advisor and Technologist. Director of Product Management at The RepTrak Company, the leading data, analytics, and insights platform powering global companies to build credibility worldwide. Chief Technology Officer for The Vienna Project, US/AT
Hazal (H) Uzunkaya, Designer/Research Technologist. Brandeis University Library/ Research Technology & Innovation, Head of Brandeis MakerLab, TU
Documentation team
Mike E. Dunne, Still Photographer and Video Editor
Jevgenijs Luhnevs, 3-D photography/videography. Filmmaker Ambassador. Innervision Team, LV
Nikolajs Krasnopevcevs, Videographer and editor. Studio NK SIA; Froggy Studio, LV.
Science Team
Prof. Dr. Richard A. Freund (1955-2022), the Bertram and Gladys Aaron Professor of Jewish Studies at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, VA, and author of The Archaeology of the Holocaust: Vilna, Rhodes, and Escape Tunnels.
Professor Harry Jol, Geographer and Anthropologist. Ground Penetrating Radar Specialist, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
Professor Philip Reeder, Geographer and Cartographer. Dean of the Bayer School of Science, Duquesne University.
Honorary Board
Ambassador Stuart E. Eizenstadt, a partner at Washington, D.C. law firm, Covington & Burling heading the firm’s international practice, and is senior strategist at APCO Worldwide.
Professor Antony Polonsky, Chief Historian Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw (2014); a doctorate honoris causa by the Jagiellonian University, Krakow (2014); Member, International Commission for the Evaluation of the Crimes of the Nazi and Soviet Occupation Regimes in Lithuania (2014).
Professor Jonathan Sarna, University Professor and the Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University, where he directs its Schusterman Center for Israel Studies.
Professor George D. Schwab, survivor of the Kaiserwald concentration camp, was a professor at Columbia University and City College of New York, and also co-founder of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy.
Margers Vestermanis, Latvian Holocaust survivor, Historian Founder and former Director and Founder of the museum “Jews in Latvia.”
Advisory Board
Mag. Dr. Gerhard Baumgartner, Scientific Director of the Documentation Archive of Austrian Resistance (DÖW).
Dr. Michael Birenbaum, Director of the Sigi Ziering Institute: Exploring the Ethical and Religious Implications of the Holocaust, and a Professor of Jewish Studies at the American Jewish University.
Professor Erika Doss, Professor of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame College of Arts and Letters.
Professor Ruvin Ferber, Professor of Physics and Mathematics and Head of the Laser Centre at the University of Latvia.
Eva Fogelman, Ph.D. is a social psychologist and psychotherapist, a writer and a filmmaker, and advisor to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Professor Marianne Hirsch, William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Professor Steven T. Katz, Director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies, at Boston University.
Professor Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Chief Curator of Core Exhibition, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews; and University Professor Emerita and Professor Emerita of Performance Studies, New York University
Professor Suzanne Lacy, internationally acclaimed American artist, social activist, educator, writer and professor at the USC Roski School of Art and Design of the University of Southern California.
Mag. a Hannah M. Lessing, Secretary General, National Fund of the Republic of Austria and General Settlement Fund for victims of National Socialism.
Professor Wendy Lower, the John K. Roth Professor of History and Director of the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights at Claremont McKenna College.
Dr. Frank Mecklenberg, Director of Research and Chief Archivist at Leo Baeck Institute.
Ian Mathew Roy, Director for Research Technology and Innovation at Brandeis University: Founding Head of the MakerLab, Scientific Team,
Professor Harriet F. Senie, Director, Art History, Art Museum Studies Program and Professor of Art History, The City College, CUNY.
Professor Dr. Ojars Sparitis, PhD, Chief of the Department for Doctoral studies at Latvian Academy of Art.
Prof. Dr. habil. hist. Aivars Stranga, Full member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences, University of Latvia; Head of Department of Latvian and Eastern European History of the Faculty of History and Philosophy of the University of Latvia.
Ruth Weisberg, Professor of Fine Arts and former Dean at the USC Roski School; Director of the USC Initiative for Israeli Arts and Humanities President of the Jewish Artists Initiative of Southern California.
Partnerships
Erinnern.at. National Socialism and Holocaust. Holocaust Education Institute of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education. Vienna, AT.
Institute of Landscape Architecture, Department of Landscape, Spatial and Infrastructure Sciences at University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), Vienna, AT.
Joseph-Carlebach-Institute for Jewish Theology, Bar-Ilan University, IS.
K-Z Memorial, Neuengamme Memorial Project denk.mal Hannoverscher Bahnhof, DE.
Museum “Jews in Latvia,” LV.
Philosophy and Sociology Department and the Judaic Studies Centre, University of Latvia, LV.
Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V. / Riga Committee, Niestetal, DE.
Timeline
2019-2021 Building Infrastructure
2021-2024 Research
2022-2023 3-D tour and online exhibition
2025-2027 Memorial Development
If you have any questions, please contact:
Karen Frostig, Ph.D., Founding Director
Professor of Public Art, Lesley University
Email: locker.memorial@gmail.com
Tel. 1+ 617 965 6274