Newsletter AEMJP
European Association of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews
March 2024
Polin Museum in Warsaw
Letter from the Director of POLIN Museum in Warsaw (excerpts)
Dear Friends,
As Director of POLIN Museum, I am delighted to share that in 2024 POLIN Museum will celebrate its 10th anniversary. I would like to take this opportunity to express my deep appreciation for what we have accomplished together with your support since we opened our doors in October 2014.
In that spirit, I would like to review some of the most memorable moments from the life of the museum in 2023, which demonstrate how we are fulfilling our mission.
We organized much of the year around the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In marking this historic event, we were inspired by the commandment “Thou shalt not be indifferent,” the memorable words of Marian Turski, Auschwitz survivor and journalist.
– AEMJP took part in the celebrations
On April 19, 2023, we took part in the ceremony at the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes facing our building. Along with the presidents of Germany, Israel and Poland, thousands gathered to pay their respects to those who lived, fought, and died in the ghetto.
In addition, over the course of 2023:
- We commemorated the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising with 800 online and offline events, reaching more than 4.4 million people across the globe.
- We handed out 650,000 paper daffodils in 21 countries, so that people of good will around the world could wear this symbol of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on their clothes, a gesture that touched millions of people.
- We mounted a powerful temporary exhibition, “Around Us Sea of Fire,” which explored the fate of Jewish civilians during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. This innovative exhibition attracted more than 130,000 visitors.
And while the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the theme of the year, we did so much more:
- We welcomed 430,000 visitors in 2023!
- We gave the 9th annual POLIN Award to individuals and organizations who have refused to be indifferent to the history of Polish Jews, people who invest their hearts and minds in preserving Jewish heritage across Poland.
- We organized three international academic conferences within our Global Education Outreach Program, generating and sharing new knowledge.
Thank you! Dziękuję!
Zygmunt Stępiński
Political evolutions in Poland
| Despite our infinite sadness concerning the attacks by Hamas against Israel and the general deterioration of the situation in the Middle East, we are genuinely relieved and hopeful due to the results of the Polish parliamentary elections on October 15, 2023. Donald Tusk, who was the head of the opposition and who currently serves as the PM, was greeted with enthusiasm by international and European leaders. During an informal meeting with Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, Tusk stated: “Poles have been waiting for this moment for eight long years. I’m here to speed up the process of Poland’s return to full membership in the European Union”. Von der Leyen declared herself delighted that “the record turnout at the elections [74.4 %] has shown, once again, that Poles are strongly committed to democracy.” (Le Monde) This evolution was also marked by a resurgence of diplomatic relationships between Poland, European Union, and other countries. Israel has decided to restore its chargé d’affaires to its Embassy in Warsaw. She was recalled earlier this year – as were both countries’ ambassadors – amid a dispute over Poland introducing a law that prevents restitution claims by some Holocaust survivors.The decision for Ambassador Tal Ben-Ari to return to Warsaw was first reported by Israeli journalist Amichai Stein, who said it was the result of “several positive steps in recent weeks by the Polish government in fighting antisemitism”. (Notes from Poland) |
Travel to Poland
on the borders of the unthinkable
Warsaw, Lodz, Lublin, Treblinka, Sobibór, Bełżec & optional visit in Ukraine
from Thursday September 26
to Monday September 30 2024
We want to invite you to join us in an extraordinary trip through places which now symbolise both the most thriving period of the Jewish European history
– the culture of shtetls, surrounded by towns where Jews were main figures of emancipation in culture and science, and the tragedy of the catastrophe, of Shoah, with “Aktion Reinhardt” being its culminating moment.
Operation Reinhardt – the codename of the secret German plan in World War II to exterminate Polish Jews in the General Government district of German-occupied Poland, in particular in the extermination camps in Eastern Poland (March 1942 – November 1943).
During the operation, as many as two million Jews were sent to Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka – places we invite you to visit during this unique trip. Unlike Auschwitz which partly remained a labor camp, the sole reason why these places were constructed was to kill. In these places, Nazis invented and implemented mechanized, industrialized death.
International Conference “From Shtetl to Post – Jewish Town” in POLIN
The conference will explore how shtetls like Opatów became post-Jewish towns and how their Jewish communities are remembered by those who once lived there and by those who live there today.
September 8–10, 2024 (Sunday – Tuesday), POLIN Museum, Warsaw
More information: geopconference@polin.pl – also on the webpage
While the historical shtetl has been studied extensively, the post-Jewish town, as a historical phenomenon and evolving site of contested memory, has received less attention. After the Holocaust, the many towns where Jewish communities had lived for centuries and where they had created a distinctive way of life became places without Jews. We want to explore this process of transforming shtetls into post-Jewish space.
A must-see: a unique film about the yiddish-speaking Eastern-European Jewish culture.
Crowned at the last Rome festival, the film SHTTL by Ady Walter (2022, France-Ukraine) pays a unique tribute to the dead: to a language (yiddish), an entire culture of Eastern European shtetls.
These communities have completely disappeared (a few buildings, not destroyed, were recovered by non-Jewish inhabitants after the war…) following the occupation and Soviet collectivization (not to mention the pogroms, which already existed in the 19th century) and “the Shoah by bullets”.
More about the movie on the Fondation de la Shoah website.
Please keep your eye on another movie which will soon appear on the screens:
Insurgents! by Rafael Lewandowski
(France, documentary, 90 min, Zadig productions, Ethan Productions and France Télévisions, 2023)
This movie tells the stories of the Jewish resistance during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the spring of 1943. Women played a key role in this insurrection, like Rachel Auerbach (1903-1976) and Cywia Lubetkin (1914-1978) are the heroines of this documentary, which relates in detail the nature, origin, progress and the consequences of this act of resistance, symbolizing the refusal of passivity in the face of a planned death.
See more on the webpage of the Mémorial de la Shoah
In Memoriam
Casualties of October 7 and its aftermath
Our hearts are broken when we think of more than 1 200 killed in the unprecedented attack on Israeli civilians perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, 2023. We mourn hostages, of whom dozens have lost their lives. We live with hope that the Yad Vashem Institute historian Alex Dancyg, kidnapped from the kibbutz Nir Oz, is safe and healthy – read more about Alex.
We think with gratitude and admiration about hundreds of Israeli soldiers who died in combat. We also pray for thousands of Palestinian civilians whose lives are lost because of the cruel, blind and useless war started by Hamas.
We were honored to participate in the French National tribute led by the President Emmanuel Macron on February 7, 2024. The commemoration took place at the Hôtel des Invalides, where each of the 42 French citizens who lost their lives was represented by a photograph bearing their name, most of them having been buried in Israel. Cf. Le Monde
Polish-Israeli Historian Shlomo Avineri
Shlomo Avineri was born as Jerzy Wiener in Bielsko, Poland, 30 August 1933. He has recently passed away, at the age of 90, in Israel, on November 30, 2023.
Avineri was an outstanding political scientist and historian, author of a number of books on Karl Marx and the history and ideas of Zionism. His The Making of Modern Zionism (1981) remains a reference till today, and his more recent Herzl’s Vision – Theodor Herzl and the Foundation of the Jewish State (2013) is the most up-to-date biography of the founder of the Zionist movement.
Polish-Israeli Architect Zvi Hecker
One of the finest architects in recent history, Zvi Hecker, passed away on Sept. 25. 2023. Born in Krakow, Poland, in 1931, he changed our thinking about architecture. Among his many groundbreaking works, probably the most famous is Ramot Polin in East Jerusalem, the “Poland Heights”, a futuristic housing complex. The building is populated, as intended, mostly by Haredi Jewish families.
Read more on parametric-architecture.com
Jewish festivals in Poland
Let’s make plans for 2024 !
33th Jewish Culture Festival
La 32e édition du Festival de la culture juive de Cracovie s’est terminée par deux merveilleux concerts en plein air, d’artistes qui établissent des ponts entre la culture shtetl galicienne et les nouvelles traditions contemporaines israéliennes et juives florissantes.
Nous rejoindrons certainement le festival à l’été 2024
Dimanche 23 juin 2024 – dimanche 30 juin 2024
Venez avec nous à Cracovie et rencontrez Janusz Makuch !
Pour admirer l’atmosphère de l’événement, regardez ce petit clip !
Festival of I. B. Singer in Warsaw
From 24 August 2024 to 1 September 2024, Warsaw will be a scene of the 21st Singer’s Warsaw Jewish Culture Festival. Named after Isaac Bashevis Singer, literature Nobel Prize-winning author who grew up in Yiddish-speaking Warsaw. During the festival, “Yiddish culture returns in the pre-war movies and contemporary shows… One can sense the air of pre-war Warsaw: it seems like an eternal festival”. (the webpage of the Festival)
FestivALT 2024
FestivALT is a new, young festival which became a necessary companion of the Krawko Jewish Culture Festival in June/July each year.
Next edition: June 21-30, 2024
It operates at the intersection of art, activism and education to address difficult and timely topics relating to Polish-Jewish complexities in Poland today.
Young Jews living in Poland today do not necessarily recognize themselves in sometimes too smooth and consensual pictures of more traditional cultural events.
Their voices are essential and fascinating. Read more here
AEMJP Polin 