POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews (Polish: Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich) is a museum on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto. The Hebrew word Polin in the museum’s name means, in English, either “Poland” or “rest here” and is related to a legend on the arrival of the first Jews in Poland. The cornerstone was laid in 2007, and the museum was first opened on April 19, 2013. The museum’s Core Exhibition opened in October 2014. The museum features a multimedia narrative exhibition about the vibrant Jewish community that flourished in Poland for a thousand years up to the Holocaust. By the middle of the 1930s, Poland had the largest Jewish minority in Europe, with a share of about 10% of the total population. The building, a postmodern structure in glass, copper, and concrete, was designed by Finnish architects Rainer Mahlamäki and Ilmari Lahdelma.
The idea for creating a major new museum in Warsaw dedicated to the history of Polish Jews was initiated in 1995 by the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland. An international architectural competition for designs for the building was launched in 2005, supported by a grant from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. On June 30, 2005 the jury announced the winner; a team of two Finnish architects, Rainer Mahlamäki and Ilmari Lahdelma. On June 30, 2009 construction of the building was officially inaugurated. As of today, it is the largest cultural investment in Warsaw. The project was finished in 33 months at a cost of PLN 150 million zloty (35 million euros) allocated by the Ministry and the City.
The German federal government has contributed 5 million euros. The Museum opened the building and began its educational and cultural programs on April 19, 2013 on the 70th Anniversary of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. During the 18 months that followed, more than 180,000 visitors toured the building, visited the first temporary exhibitions, and took part in cultural and educational programs and events, including films, debates, workshops, performances, concerts and lectures. The Grand Opening, with the completed Core Exhibition, was on October 28, 2014. The central feature of the building is its cavernous entrance hall. The main hall forms a high, undulating wall. The empty space is a symbol of cracks in the history of Polish Jews. Similar in shape to gorge, which could be a reference to the crossing of the Red Sea known from the Exodus. The museum is nearly 13,000 square meters of usable space. At the lowest level, in the basement of the building will be placed a main exhibition about history of Jews from the Middle Ages to modern times. The museum building also has a multipurpose auditorium with 480 seats, temporary exhibition rooms, education center, information center, play room for children, café, shop, and in the future kosher restaurant.
Since the museum presents the whole history of Jews in Poland, not only the period under German occupation, the designer wanted to avoid similarities to existing Holocaust museums (such as the Jewish Museum Berlin and the museum at Yad Vashem) which had austere concrete structures. The architects kept the museum in the colors of sand, giving it a more approachable feeling.
The PiS government has now transferred the management of the museum to a party soldier who is loyal to the line and a right-wing nationalist, so that the museum’s program now corresponds with the historical revisionist version of the PiS, which fades out the multiple and active participation of numerous Poles in the Holocaust and later in pogroms against Jews in Poland completely and instead spreads fact-free government propaganda on the subject. Affected by these strictly nationalist purges is not only the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, but among others the Museum of the Second World War in Gdansk and the Institute of National Remembrance in Warsaw. The Polish government is trying to completely falsify the whole of Polish history. Poles already know this from the “good, old, communist times”.
