La Charmille was more than just a retirement home - it was a place of refuge, a community of destiny and a place of Jewish culture.

The home found a new home in Riehen shortly after the Second World War and was one of the few facilities in Europe for people of the Jewish faith. Opened in Riehen in 1947, it was relocated to Basel in 2002 and reopened as the Holbeinhof interfaith retirement center; the buildings in Riehen gave way to a residential development in 2004.

The research into the history of the home was initiated by the siblings Steffi and Peter Bollag, who grew up on the site as children of the cook. As part of a research seminar led by Erik Petry, deputy director of the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Basel, students conducted interviews with contemporary witnesses and combed through archives. The exhibition at the MUKS draws on these biographies, which tell of tragic twists and turns in life, of flight and arrival.

With its special geographical location on the edge of Switzerland, directly on the German border, "La Charmille" was one of the few Jewish institutions of its kind in Switzerland and the wider European region. The home took in people from many countries and different social classes who were looking for a new home after the Second World War. Many of the first residents were Holocaust survivors. "La Charmille" offered them security and the opportunity to live Jewish traditions and rituals.

Over the years, "La Charmille" became a meeting place whose reputation spread beyond the country's borders. Some of the residents were well-known personalities from the worlds of art and science. The actress Betty Isolani-Perl, her daughter and writer Gertrud Isolani, the historian Selma Stern and the writer Hermann Kesten spent their twilight years at "La Charmille".

The exhibition and publication shed light on a unique microcosm of world events and tell of everyday life in a retirement home and the resilience of the people in "La Charmille".


Note: This text was translated by machine translation software and not by a human translator. It may contain translation errors.