Niemandsland. Hader am Berg Scopus

In the 1920s and 1930s, several important Jewish institutions were founded on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem: the Hebrew University, the Jewish National Library, and the Hadassa Hospital. The significance of these institutions to the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, was both very real and also highly symbolical. However, following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, these institutions found themselves in Jordanian territory, in an enclave administered by the UN and difficult to access. This enclave henceforth became the object of conflicting claims to sovereignty, while the Jewish cultural assets held there, especially books and other collections, remained beyond the grasp of the scholars who had fastidiously protected them for decades prior. Through these objects and their fates, Yfaat Weiss’s essay tells the story of the history of Jerusalem following war and partition.

The event took place at the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig with a limited number of participants and was streamed via the SAW YouTube channel. A recording of the event is available via the »Virtual Archive« of this website.