Following a decade of preparations a groundbreaking ceremony
was held this week in Warsaw for the Museum of the History of
Polish Jews. Honoraries at the event included Polish
President Lech Kaczynski, the newly elected Israeli President
Shimon Peres who was born in Poland, and a special delegation
sent by US President George Bush.
The cost of building the museum is estimated at $55 million
and hundreds of thousands of visitors are expected annually.
The three-year construction project will be carried out with
assistance by the Polish government, the City of Warsaw, the
German government and private donors.
The museum will be built in an area that was once a vibrant
center of Jewish life and later became a part of the infamous
Warsaw Ghetto. The building will be located opposite an
enormous monument to the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto
Uprising in 1943.
The eight exhibits, which will include computerized
multimedia presentations and were prepared by historians who
specialize in the history of Polish Jewry and the Holocaust
in cooperation with a team of top architects from Finland,
will also focus on the 800 years of Polish Jewry's splendid
history, starting in the Middle Ages when Jews fleeing
pogroms in Western Europe took shelter in Poland.
Before the Holocaust, Polish Jews numbered around 3,500,000,
comprising 10 percent of the general population. At least
3,000,000 perished. After the war only 280,000 remained, most
of whom immigrated to the US or Israel immediately after the
war or following the wave of antisemitism under communist
rule in 1968.
Today, according to various estimates, Poland today has 3,500-
15,000 Jews out of a total population of 38 million.
