The site uniquely reflects the key historical turning points and changes in Europe’s 20th century.   When Europe and Czechoslovakia were split in two in 1938 at the Munich Agreement, the frontier went down the stream in the factory.  The grandfather of the current owners woke up one morning with Nazi soldiers on the other side of the bridge.  As described in “The Arks: the Low-Beer story behind Schindler’s List and Villa Tugendhat” which collected the testimonies of the events:

“My grandfather Walter Low-Beer woke up one day, and was standing on a new line, which had just cut Czechoslovakia in two, Europe in two, and the Jewish world into pieces.  The line, recently drawn at the Munich Agreement, ran along the stream which flowed through the factory.  Here was my short, athletic, Jewish grandfather armed with his walking stick, facing the oncoming battalion of Nazi soldiers on the other side of the bridge.  Apparently, they got down from their armed vehicles, and asked him to cross the bridge to negotiate.  If Walter had crossed the stream, the soldiers would have packed him into their trucks and off to a concentration camp.

But Walter stood his ground.  He told the soldiers they could go no further, to phone Berlin to check their borders and orders, which apparently, they did.  That is how he held up the Nazi invasion of this part of Czechoslovakia for three full days, a Jew defending a broken Czechoslovakia.”

The factory was then stolen by the Nazis and by Oskar Schindler and became a unique concentration camp where the 1200 Jews on Schindler’s List were saved.  It is a monument to standing up to discrimination and to survivors who continue to shape our world.

It continued as a factory under communism and transformed after the Velvet Revolution in 1989 to work for Ikea, Skoda, produce the cloth for the guards of the Queen of England, until finally it collapsed in 2008.  The buildings urgently require a new function defined by the activities in this proposal, if they are not to collapse, be redeveloped, and their remembrance function lost.