How can we best memorialize the past? What functions can memorial sites and commemorative gestures serve? These questions are central to The Property. Some related moments in the text include: when Mica and Avram Yagodnik stand in front of the “Remains of the Jewish Ghetto, Próżna Street” (34); when Mica meets Tomasz, a local tour guide who gives tours of Jewish Warsaw (40); and when Mica gets swept up in the middle of a reenactment being held by the Society for Jewish Memorialization (159-161).

Helena Czernek and Aleksander Prugar are two artists, both born in Warsaw, Poland. Together, they formed Mi Polin ("From Poland"), the first Polish Judaica company in existence since World War II. In this video, we get a glimpse of one of their central art projects—a memorialization project. Czernek and Prugar travel around Poland and Ukraine searching for doorposts (entryways) that bear the imprints of mezuzahs that are no longer there. (Mezuzahs are small casings containing verses from the Torah. In Jewish law and tradition, mezuzahs are affixed to the entryways of people's homes.) The artists create molds out of the empty spaces they find, each unique, and then cast these shapes in bronze to create mezuzah memorials. Their work has been featured in museums and exhibitions around the world. As the video succinctly puts it, “We cast mezuzah traces in bronze to activate a link between past and present.” 

Suggested Activities: Throughout The Property, the central characters often find themselves at, or talking about, memorial landmarks. Before showing the video, begin a conversation in class about memorialization. You can open by asking students whether they are familiar with any memorials in their neighborhoods, or whether they have ever visited a famous memorial. Try to get them to establish as many details as possible about any memorial they have seen. What did it look like? Where was it? What was it commemorating? What did it make them think or feel?

Once you have come up with a few examples, ask students to think more generally about memorials. See if, as a class, you can come up with a one- or two-sentence definition and explanation: what they are, and why they exist. You can connect these answers to the role that memorial sites serve in The Property. Do the characters seem interested in memorializing the past? Why or why not?

Have students watch the Mi Polin video and try to articulate the artists’ goals. Are the artists succeeding in meeting these goals? What does it mean to create something beautiful in an effort to remember lives lost in such a tragedy? Does it matter that the artists are making money from these memorial artworks? For more details about Mi Polin’s mezuzah project, you may wish to show students this page on their website, which has photographs of some of the mezuzahs and an interactive map showing the locations of the mezuzah traces.  

Optionally, you can have students, either in pairs or in larger groups, come up with their own ideas for memorial objects, sites, or gestures, either to commemorate an individual loss or a communal one, like the Holocaust. Be sure to have them discuss details including design and placement. You can have them either create drawings of these memorials or build them out of simple objects and recycled materials. You can also have students write descriptive text to accompany these memorials.