When Warsaw’s Museum of the History of Polish Jews’ main exhibition opens to the public in September 2014, it will add to the city’s Jewish historical trail something which does not presently exist: a history of Jewish life. The core exhibition has been in development since 2003, when the master plan, including the concept and…
Michael Schudrich, chief rabbi of Poland, was on hand to affix the mezuza at the entrance to Warsaw’s first Jewish community center at its grand unveiling, October 27. The act of opening the building and cutting the ribbon was not his, however, but given over to a young boy while Schudrich helped hold the band…
Israel Gutman, Israel’s most prominent survivor historian, died in Jerusalem on October 1. A native of Warsaw, Gutman was only a teenager when the Germans invaded his Poland. His parents and his older sister died in the Warsaw ghetto; his younger sister was part of the famed Janusz Korczak orphanage, led by the charismatic pediatrician…
The Museum of the History of Polish Jews has gone over budget and the official opening of its permanent core exhibition has been pushed back. The official opening has been delayed until Fall 2014, the museum’s Virtual Shtetl web portal reported Tuesday. The museum is seeking an extra $2.5 million – half from the state…
On both occasions that the KGB arrested the Yiddish writer and poet Naftali Herts Kon, it burned his writings. When Kon escaped from the Soviet Union to Poland in 1959, he thought everything would be different — but it wasn’t. When the Polish Communists arrested Kon in 1960, they simply confiscated his writings and refused…
Unknown vandals painted “Jude Raus” at the entrance of a memorial to the leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The words, which mean “Jews Out,” were discovered Wednesday at the Anielewicz Mound in Warsaw. The monument to Mordechai Anielewicz, commander of the uprising, as well as to the rest of the uprising’s fighters, is located…
A man suspected of being a Ukrainian Nazi with links to murders during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and other massacres has been living in Minnesota for over 50 years, according to evidence recently uncovered. The Associated Press reported on Friday that Michael Karkoc, 94, entered the U.S. after lying to immigration authorities in 1949 that…
Making sure food is part of a museum is not an easy task — fresh dishes will perish, plastic ones miss the point. But, at Warsaw’s new Museum of the History of Polish Jews, food, drink and the special Jewish relationship to eating and drinking will be a recurring thread woven throughout the yet to…
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