10 years of Polin
The museum also looks at renewed interest in Polish Jewry and a revival of Jewish life since the 1990s.
A capacity audience packed into Warsaw’s Polin Jewish Museum last Saturday night to celebrate 10 years since it opened to show the world a millennium of Polish-Jewish life.
Representatives from around the globe included Melbourne’s Eva Hussain, a board member of the Australian Society of Polish Jews and their Descendants, and Sydney’s Zygmunt Sieradzki of the Australian Institute of Polish Affairs.
Attendees stood in silence to remember the victims of October 7, including Polish-born Israeli historian Alex Dancyg who was abducted and murdered by Hamas.
The museum’s main exhibition takes visitors through 1000 years of Polish Jewish life from the Middle Ages when Jews were welcomed to Poland under a charter of Jewish liberties, through hard times under the Khemelnytsky pogroms and the partition of Poland. In 1939, 3.5 million Jews made up 10 per cent of Poland’s population but the vast majority were later sent to Nazi extermination camps.
The museum also looks at renewed interest in Polish Jewry and a revival of Jewish life since the 1990s.
In a message to Australian Jews, who make up one of the world’s foremost Jewish communities of Polish heritage, Poland’s Chief Rabbi Michael Shudrich told The AJN, “This is also your museum. You should come and visit.”
Addressing the event, Polish historian and Holocaust survivor Marian Turski, 98, an early visionary of the museum, described it as “an ice breaker” between Poles and Jews and a catalyst for some Poles to discover their hidden Jewish identities.
Under the catchcry, “We are here” from the WWII Partisan Song, messages of congratulation were relayed from Yad Vashem chair Danny Dayan, US antisemitism envoy Professor Deborah Lipstadt, World Jewish Congress president Ronald Lauder and US documentary maker Nancy Spielberg.
comments