Jewish heritage in the creative cities of central and eastern Europe: Tourism, technologies and prosthetic memory

Abstract

This paper deals with Jewish mobile multimedia cultural-heritage, root-diaspora tours and apps. The author presents and compares UNESCO Creative Cities Network of Central and Eastern Europe in which Jewish communities were numerous before the World War II – Budapest (Hun-gary), Kraków (Poland), Prague (Czech Republic), Kaunas (Lithuania). Also, article deals with other cities of Jewish cultural heritage that are not listed in UNESCO Creative Cities Network as Warsaw, Poland and Vilnius, Lithuania, but propose multimedia tours. I will analyse, how aspects of creative city are included and highlighted in multimedia tours and apps. Visiting of memory sites is very relevant aspect of memory culture, related to other creative and cultural industries – tourism, heritage, museums etc. Cityscape and sites of memory of the Holocaust as cultural topography materialize and embody traumas, regrets, and responsibility to remember past. Contemporary technologies as mobile multimedia tours and apps are designed to aid travellers and tourists to find heritage and other touristic objects in a map, it provides general practical information, as well as maps, photos, augmented reality, and Jewish itineraries. Herewith these new technologies are changing very deeply not only travelling habits or photography practices, they fundamentally transform our relation with cultural heritage and memory. Mobile phones became not only devices for communication, but also as digital prosthetic memory.