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…
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…
