Jewish History
June 27, 2007
Kaczynski hailed the "belated success" of the start of construction on the multi-million dollar, multi-media facility focused on nearly nine centuries of Jewish life in Poland obliterated by Nazi genocide during the Holocaust.
"Over the past 900 years, our histories have been entangled," Polish President Lech told dignitaries and onlookers standing in front of the imposing black marble Warsaw Ghetto Uprising memorial, commemorating the 1943 doomed rebellion by members of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB).
"There have been good times and bad. But the history of the Polish Jews is a part of the history of my country, my nation. It is a history that deserves being commemorated," he said.
The land-mark museum is appropriately located in Warsaw, "the greatest Jewish city in Europe" prior to World War II, Kaczynski said.
The Warsaw ghetto
Before the war, Poland's Jewish minority numbered some 3.5 million and accounted for roughly 10 per cent of the country's pre- war population.
The ground-breaking ceremonies were conducted in an district of Warsaw that was at the heart of Jewish life prior to the war. Tragically, it was enclosed inside the infamous wartime Jewish ghetto created by Nazi Germany as part of its systematic genocide against European Jews.
The Nazi German ghettos and death camps claimed the vast majority of Poland's Jews. The number accounts for half of the six million Europeans of Jewish ancestry killed by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. Europe was home to some 11 million Jews prior to the Holocaust.
Biblical proportions
Designed by Finnish architectural duo Rainer Mahlamäki and Ilmari Lahdelma, the museum's entrance promises to be of biblical proportions.
A symbolically ruptured facade will open up to monumental undulating walls alluding to the Old Testament's miraculous parting of the Red Sea through which the prophet Moses led the Jews to escape captivity in Egypt to a new life in the promised land.
It is a labor of love for project director Jerzy Halberstadt and head of the Warsaw-based Jewish Historical Institute and Holocaust survivor Marian Turski. Holocaust and Jewish history expert Israel Gutman will supervise the team preparing expositions.
"This will be a museum about life that will benefit dialogue and the future," Halberstadt said, adding that the institution aimed to attract a half million visitors a year.
Financed by by the Polish government, the city of Warsaw and the European Union, the project is slated to cost around $65 million (48 million euros), according to news agency AP.
Measuring a total of 18,000 square meters (59,000 square feet), the museum will be one of the largest Jewish museums in the world -- along with Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the Holocaust Memorial in Washington DC.