An ambitious museum devoted to the 1,000-year history of Poland’s Jews will open in 2013 on the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, officials said Sept. 19.
The Museum of the History of Polish Jews will have multimedia exhibits that describe the life and culture of Jews in Poland, their fate in the Holocaust and the present-day revival of Jewish culture.
“The Jews were a part of the Polish landscape; now they are gone,” said historian Marian Turski, head of the Jewish Historical Institute, which is cooperating on the project. “We want to fill in this vacuum.”
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. — ap