Polish Jewish Museum To Open In April 2013

WARSAW, Poland -- An ambitious museum devoted to the 1,000-year history of Poland's Jews will open on the anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, officials said Monday.

Some 500,000 visitors are expected each year to the Museum of the History of Polish Jews to view multimedia exhibits on the life and culture of Jews in Poland, their fate in the Holocaust and the present day, as Jewish culture is being gradually revived.

"The Jews were a part of the Polish landscape, now they are gone," said historian Marian Turski. "We want to fill in this vacuum."

"This (museum) is about people who were here, who created their works here, who contributed to the progress of the civilization," said Turski, who is head of the Jewish Historical Institute, which is cooperating on the project.

The building is an austere concrete-and-glass structure, divided by a jagged chasm that symbolizes Moses' Biblical parting of the Red Sea that allowed the Jews to flee slavery in Egypt.

It will open to visitors on April 19, 2013, the 70th anniversary of the doomed uprising by Warsaw's Jews against the Nazis, said Agnieszka Ruzinska, the museum's head.

Culture Minister Bogdan Zdrojewski announced a subsidy of 10 million zlotys ($3 million) to help finish the building on time. The funds are to come from state and Warsaw coffers.

President Barack Obama visited the neighboring Monument to Warsaw Ghetto Heroes and was briefed on the progress of the museum in May.

Poland's Jewish community numbered 3.5 million before World War II, but most were murdered during the Holocaust under German Nazi occupation. Today, the community has some 20,000 members and is growing.

Comments

[kodimirpal]

12:04 PM on 09/23/2011

Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, who was awarded the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, has candidly identified the reason. Speaking to an audience in Boston, he said:
“But you know as well as I do that, somehow, the Israeli government is placed on a pedestal [in the US], and to criticize it is to be immediately dubbed anti-Semitic … People are scared in this country, to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful -- very powerful.”
Bishop Tutu spoke the truth. Although Jews make up only two or three percent of the US population, they wield immense power and influence – much more than any other ethnic or religious group.
As Jewish author and political science professor Benjamin Ginsberg has pointed out:
“Since the 1960s, Jews have come to wield considerable influence in American economic, cultural, intellectual and political life. Jews played a central role in American finance during the 1980s, and they were among the chief beneficiaries of that decade’s corporate mergers and reorganizations. Today, though barely two percent of the nation’s population is Jewish, close to half its billionaires are Jews. The chief executive officers of the three major television networks and the four largest film studios are Jews, as are the owners of the nation’s largest newspaper chain and the most influential single newspaper, the New York Times... The role and influence of Jews in American politics is equally marked...
Unable to post to the article on Jewish influence in USA

[jerryfromcalifornia]

10:25 AM on 09/20/2011

Ge, I hope that the 17 Jews left in Poland are able to attend.

[see-ellen2001]

07:35 AM on 09/20/2011

Fantastic.

[fjg]

11:49 PM on 09/19/2011

Shame on whoever is censoring this post...you allow Blutodog's nonsense to stand and scrub my riposte which was based on facts.

[Blutodog]

09:55 PM on 09/19/2011

The Poles hated the Jews almost as much as the Nazis. After the murder of almost every Polish Jew in WW2 antisemitism was a problem in Poland after the war. Go figure?

[Myoho Mod]

02:28 PM on 09/20/2011

antisemitism really only began in Poland after the Russians conquered the country.

[Blutodog]

04:01 PM on 09/20/2011

Oh yea, really? IC the Poles just loved the Jews before the Nazis and Russians arrived? Nonsense. I have Polish Jewish relatives that escaped before the Russians arrived and miraculously survived the Germans. They have told me that the Poles didn't lift a finger to help the Jews. They also told me that the Poles hated their own Jewish countrymen with a vengeance, before and after the War..