Roman Kroke | Interdisciplinary Artist

Artist, curator, former lawyer, located in Berlin (Germany) and Lyon (France). Drawings & multimedia installations. Artistic genre: process art. Development, coordination and direction of international projects: exhibitions, workshops, lectures, teacher trainings. Partnerships with universities, scientific research institutes, schools, memorial sites, prisons, museums, foundations and TV productions. With respect to his artistic approach to history/memory and more specifically about the Shoah, Roman has been giving lectures, workshops and teacher trainings throughout Europe at many historical sites, among others at the Berlin memorial “Gleis 17” on behalf of the “Permanent Conference of Nazi Memorial Sites in the Berlin Area” (Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the Memorial site and Educational Centre House of the Wannsee Conference, the Topography of Terror Documentation Center, the Memorial and Museum Sachsenhausen, the German Resistance Memorial Centre), at the memorial  Maison d’Izieu (FR), in partnership with the Holocaust museum Mémorial de la Shoah and the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah (both Paris/FR). His approach has been shown, among others, in several documentary movies on ARTE.TV and published by the Berlin University of the Arts and in the Swiss pedagogical journal on history teaching DIDACTICA HISTORICA.

Homepage

As part of the research for his Bielski-Illustrations, Roman Kroke travelled for two weeks through Belarus during April/May 2010, sponsored by the Bielski-Family-Foundation and the Goethe-Institute Belarus: Documentation. He visited historic sites, interviewed contemporary witnesses and met with scientific researchers specializing in the Jewish partisan movement. He continued this research during a second stay in Belarus one year later, when he visited Belarus as part of a film project (coordinated by André Bossuroy). In March 2011, Roman Kroke travelled to London where he interviewed Jack (Idel) Kagan (1929-2016). At the age of fourteen Idel had been one of the 120 Jews who managed to escape from the labour-camp in Novogrudok through a self-made tunnel and joined the Bielski partisans in the forest.

Roman Kroke at a historical site of the Bielski Partisans, together with the local expert Tamara Vershitskaya and a contemporary witness.

Intersdiciplinary art-workshop by Roman Kroke about the Bielski partisans

Kroke’s pilot-workshop about the Bielski Partisans was led as part of an international youth exchange between the Goethe-Gymnasium Berlin/Germany (Project coordinator: Dr. Walter Domke) and the Gymnasium Haganum/Netherlands. Documentation of the workshop online

Topics of Roman Kroke's art-workshops

• Overview
• The Bielski Partisans
• The diary of the Dutch Jew Etty Hillesum
• The “Maison d’Izieu” – Memorial of the exterminated Jewish Children
• The “Theresienstadt” concentration camp and ghetto
• The Holocaust survivor Sarah Lichtsztejn-Montard
• The “Les Milles” internation and deportation Camp
• The German student resistance group “The White Rose”
• The German resistance fighter Adolf Reichwein
• Teacher Training about the Holocaust
• Study travels to Poland (Cracow, Auschwitz) for University professors

Publications

• Kroke, Roman: Erasmus+ project “Our Memories and I”. Interdisciplinary Art Workshops. Mediel (December 2019)

The publication documents school workshops realized by Roman Kroke from 2017-2019 for the organisation EUROM (European Observatory on Memories) at five different historical sites in Europe. The publication was co-financed by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Commission.

• Kroke, Roman: Schienen in den Tod – Brücken in die Zukunft (1941-2016), Interdisziplinäres Pilotprojekt zum Mahnmal Gleis 17. Verlag der Universität der Künste Berlin (October 2016)

The publication documents Roman Kroke’s seminar “Rails towards death – bridges into the future” (orig. title: Schienen in den Tod – Brücken in die Zukunft) realized for students of the Berlin University of the Arts coming from diverse faculties (visual communication, school music teaching, school art teaching, special needs education). On behalf of the “Permanent Conference of Nazi Memorial Sites in the Berlin Area” (Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the Memorial site and Educational Centre House of the Wannsee Conference, the Topography of Terror Documentation Center, the Memorial and Museum Sachsenhausen, the German Resistance Memorial Centre) Kroke curated an exhibition of his students’ artworks as part of the official commemoration ceremony at the Berlin memorial “Gleis 17” realized on occasion of the 75. year of commemoration of the deportation of Berlin Jews (18. October 1941).

• Kroke, Roman: Frontières et Passages. L’art comme médium interdisciplinaire pour enseigner la Shoah. In: Didactica Historica. Revue suisse pour l’enseignement de l’histoire, N° 5, May 2019

• Interview with Roman Kroke by the Belgian Agency for global citizenship education "Annoncer la Couleur" : L'Art, un levier pour la citoyenneté mondiale, Annoncer la Couleur, May 2019