In Poland, where 3 million Polish Jews died at Nazi hands, not one but two new monuments are being planned in Warsaw that will memorialize — and, some fear, distort the role of — the several thousand non-Jewish Poles who tried to save them. As Holocaust Remembrance Day approaches, both projects are generating heated criticism….
Warsaw residents, including representatives of the Jewish community, marked the 71st anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Saturday’s ceremony featured prayers and the laying of wreaths at the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes in the Polish capital. The approximately 200 participants then marched to the Umschlagplatz square, the site where Jews in the early 1940s…
A Passover Seder in prewar Europe. Every other spring, the Zionist-Socialist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair takes its bogrim, the group of usually 16-year-old leaders from around the world, on a weeklong trip to Poland. When it was my turn in 2006, the dates fell on Passover. The nine of us from Vienna boarded a night…
Dariusz Stola, the newly appointed director of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, never seems to tire of discussing the groundbreaking institution’s most important mission. The bespectacled history professor, who is not Jewish, says the museum aims to show off the richness of Polish Jewry’s 1,000-year history, not its devastation in the Holocaust….
Workers began demolishing a wall in Warsaw near the spot where Jews were gathered for transport to the Treblinka concentration camp. The demolition of the wall bordering the square in the former Warsaw Ghetto known as the Umschlagplatz was first reported Tuesday by the Virtual Shtetl website. The brick wall, which in some places is…
(Haaretz) — When 30-year-old Antonina Samecka returned to Poland after her first visit to Israel on Birthright, she wore a Magen David (Star of David) necklace. Her grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, was shocked to see her, and asked that she take off the necklace from the Holy Land. Her grandmother believed it was still dangerous…
After cost overruns delayed the official opening, the core exhibition of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews will open in October. The announcement of the Oct. 28 opening was made Wednesday by Polish Deputy Minister of Culture and National Heritage Malgorzata Omilanowska. Last week, the Polish Minister of Culture Bogdan Zdrojewski announced that…
A monument commemorating Poles who rescued Jews during the Holocaust will be constructed near the Museum of the History of Polish Jews. The monument construction committee made the announcement on Friday. The monument construction is scheduled to be completed in fall 2014. The committee was initiated by Polish-Jewish businessman and philanthropist Sigmund Rolat. “A monument…
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