While its location speaks volumes, the museum is designed to draw attention to Polish Jewish life before and after the Holocaust.
The corner of Nalewki and Gesia Street, here and nowhere else, is the very center of the Jewish world.” Upon seeing the sea of rubble after the ghetto was destroyed, Seidman wrote: “Of all the Jewish communities, the largest and most traditional is in Poland, in Warsaw. The father and son designers-Andrzej and Maciej Bulanda-who conceptualized the mezuzah were inspired by the words of survivor Hillel Seidman. The mezuzah affixed to the main entrance is formed from a brick excavated from a Jewish tenement buried beneath what is now a nearby park. The sand-colored undulating walls of the cavernous central hall symbolize the cracks in Polish-Jewish history. Set in a minimalist glass structure designed by Finnish architect Rainer Mahlamäki, the museum stands on the site of the vibrant pre-war Jewish MuranÓw neighborhood-later the Warsaw Ghetto. From the moment I arrived at the museum, which opened its doors in 2013 before its permanent exhibition was complete, I was filling in knowledge gaps. To say I was excited is an understatement: Despite my research, I sensed that there were gaping holes in my understanding of the world from which my family came. I was invited to preview the core exhibition of Warsaw’s Museum of the History of Polish Jews, months before its official opening on October 28th. This past July it brought me to Poland, the mothership of Jews in Eastern Europe. This longing to know more about my family’s origins led me to genealogical research and DNA testing, to towns and shtetls in Ukraine, and to Moment. Like many immigrants from Eastern Europe, my grandparents and great-grandparents rarely spoke of the Old Country, leaving me to spend years trying to piece together the clues. My personal journey to Jewish identity has taken place by way of the past. Preview of the Core Exhibition of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews
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