Poland - art and memory. Page of History Foundation

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I have to admit that I had never heard of the Page of History Foundation and its interesting project linking art and commemoration  until I read a recent  article in the Jewish Chronicle about an art work it just unveiled in the town of Gora Kalwaria (Yiddish Ger) south of Warsaw -- a sculpture depicting Adam and Eve by the Polish artist Bronislaw Krzysztof.

The year was 1990, Communism had just collapsed in Poland and John Pomian, a Pole living in the UK, was on a return visit to his country of origin with a Jewish friend, Casimir Stamirski.

As the pair passed through the town of Mogielnica, Mr Pomian, who served in the RAF during the war, was invited by Mr Stamirski to stop off in the town to see they could find any traces of the Jewish community that once thrived there.

There was nothing to be found. As they returned to their car, they spotted a large boulder bearing the names of locals who died during the Second World War. There were no Jewish names among them.

On his return to London, Mr Pomian decided something had to be done to commemorate the presence of Jews in Poland, who, he says, "have shared our history for centuries". In 1991, Mr Pomian set up the Page of History Foundation, which aimed to install works of art in towns where Jews once lived as gestures of remembrance "from Poles towards Polish Jews".

 Read full article HERE

The foundation's web site describes its purpose as commemorating the Jewish presence in Poland "through funding works of art authored by recognized artists and making these available to a wider public."

It states that the Foundation's four basic principles are:

--  this is to be a Polish gesture towards the Jews, who shared our history for centuries and made their contribution to the development of Polish culture and commercial life.

--  this is to be a completely private undertaking and we will not be seeking any money from public funds.

--  we will commemorate Polish Jews through works of art of the highest and lasting aesthetic merit.

-- the inspiration for these works will be the Old Testament, which is the sacred scripture of both Christians and Jews.

Besides in Gora Kalwaria, works of art have been put up since 1995 in Warsaw, Szydlow, Lodz and Zamosc.

Poland -- Museum of the History of Polish Jewry

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

During the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow last month, I spoke with Barbara Kirshenblatt Gimblett, who heads the team developing the core exhibit of the Museum of the History of Polish Jewry. The Q and A was published in The Forward.

The museum has gone through some rough patches in recent months, with the departure, under pressure, of its director, Jerzy Halbersztadt, and financial shortfalls. What can you say about the status of the institution?

First of all, one of the great strengths of the institution is that it does not depend on one person. And that is a tribute to the former director. This museum has the good fortune to have a very, very good team. And the team has rallied and is functioning in a very positive way. So I’m optimistic….

Financially, we struggle. But we have donors, led by Sigmund Rolat and Tad Taube, that have been with us and supported us for many years.

What have been the main challenges? Are you satisfied with the process and result so far?

Although I first started coming to Poland in 1981, it was not until I began working on this project that I began to realize what it means to tell the story of how Polish Jews lived — and not only how they died — here, in the very place where they created such a vibrant civilization. That story has been overshadowed, understandably, by the Holocaust.… What began as a challenge — there is no collection of objects that could support such a compelling story — turned out to be an extraordinary opportunity and lesson, so to speak, in how to bring history to life using every possible medium.

How close is the exhibition to being installed?

Our goal is to open April 2013. When he visited the museum in May, President Obama promised to bring his daughters to the opening — and we’ll hold him to it!

Read more: http://forward.com/articles/140845/#ixzz1U8jKIST1

Poland -- Home of WW2-era Warsaw Zoo director who sheltered Jews to become a museum

by Ruth Ellen Gruber




The two-story home where the Warsaw Zoo’s director Jan Żabiński and his wife Antonina sheltered about 300 Jews and others from the Nazis during World War II is to become a small museum dedicated to the couple and their heroism.

According to a report on Polish radio, the museum will be opened in the fall.

The Zabinskis were recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among Nations in 1965.

Zabinski was allowed to enter the Warsaw Ghetto as a municipal official. There he connected with people he knew and, according to testimony on the Yad Vashem web site, helped get Jews "over to Aryan side, provided them with indispensable personal documents, looked for accommodations, and when necessary hid them at his villa or on the zoo’s grounds.”

With the Zabinskis' help, many Jews found temporary shelter in the zoo’s abandoned animal cells, until, the web site puts it,  "they were able to relocate to permanent places of refuge elsewhere." In addition, the couple, aided by their son, sheltered nearly a dozen Jews in their two-story private home on the zoo's grounds.

According to the Polish radio report, when Nazis officials visited, Antonina Zabinska would play a certain piece of music on the family piano to warn Jews in the house that they should hide.




The Yad Vashem web site  describes Zabinski as an active member of the  Polish underground Armia Krajowa (Home Army), who 

participated in the Polish uprising in Warsaw of August and September 1944. Upon its suppression, he was taken as a prisoner to Germany. His wife continued his work, looking after the needs of some of the Jews left behind in the ruins of the city. Jan wrote in his own testimony explaining his motives: “I do not belong to any party, and no party program was my guide during the occupation... I am a Pole – a democrat. My deeds were and are a consequence of a certain psychological composition, a result of progressive-humanistic upbringing, which I received at home as well as in Kreczmar High School. Many times I wished to analyze the causes for dislike for Jews and I could not find any, besides artificially formed ones.”

The Zabinskis' story was recounted in the 2007 book by Diane Ackerman, "The Zookeeper's Wife."

Publishers Weekly wrote:

Using Antonina's diaries, other contemporary sources and her own research in Poland, Ackerman takes us into the Warsaw ghetto and the 1943 Jewish uprising and also describes the Poles' revolt against the Nazi occupiers in 1944. She introduces us to such varied figures as Lutz Heck, the duplicitous head of the Berlin zoo; Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, spiritual head of the ghetto; and the leaders of Zegota, the Polish organization that rescued Jews. Ackerman reveals other rescuers, like Dr. Mada Walter, who helped many Jews pass, giving lessons on how to appear Aryan and not attract notice. Ackerman's writing is viscerally evocative, as in her description of the effects of the German bombing of the zoo area: ...the sky broke open and whistling fire hurtled down, cages exploded, moats rained upward, iron bars squealed as they wrenched apart.

Poland -- Politics and Shake-ups at the Jewish History Museum in Warsaw.....

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The Forward runs a fascinating piece about the shake-up at the top of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw that saw the forced resignation of longtime director Jerzy Halbersztadt, one of the creators of the institution.

The museum -- nearly 20 years in development -- is now scheduled to open in 2013. Its building is largely complete, but work is still going on regarding the exhibits and installations. The Forward notes that Halberszadt's departure under pressure "is provoking concern about the future of the ambitious project, which aims to preserve a legacy of 1,000 years of Jewish life in Poland."

Photo: Handhouse Studio

Jerzy Halbersztadt, the museum’s project director since its conception in 1996, announced his resignation at an April 22 press conference after months of indecision by Poland’s Ministry of Culture about renewing his five-year contract. Halbersztadt’s contract had lapsed five months earlier.

Since Halbersztadt’s announcement, the museum has been run by his former deputy, Agnieszka Rudzińska, while the institution’s trustees search for a successor.

Halbersztadt’s unexpected departure came about as a result of repeated clashes with the Ministry of Culture over what he regarded as inadequate funding for the museum’s day-to-day operations. But in a March statement to the press, Culture and National Heritage Minister Bogdan Zdrojewski said that Halbersztadt was unable to cooperate with others and that he believed it was time for the project to have a new director.

Halbersztadt told the Forward that after his most recent contract lapsed, “They reduced my authority as director. I was unable to make any strategic financial decisions and even a [lost my] right to contract staff.”

Read more: http://forward.com/articles/138075/#ixzz1NNOS0vpM

Warsaw -- Festival of New Jewish Music

A reminder that the Festival of New Jewish Music in Warsaw starts today and runs til April 12. Information and program HERE.

For other Jewish music and culture festivals throughout the coming months, see the link in the sidebar of this blog!

"Jewish Heritage Travel" at Warsaw Airport

It's always nice to see a book on sale where it should be sold -- a friend of mine found National Geographic Jewish Heritage Travel on sale now at Warsaw airport. Cool!

Poland --the power of a Jewish graveyard

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

I've written for years about the power and emotions evoked by Jewish cemeteries, particularly those in Eastern Europe.... Now Britain's Foreign Secretary David Miliband has felt the pull -- as he recounts in an article in the Jewish Chronicle. Miliband visited the new Museum of the History of Polish Jews project. Had he headed south, he could have felt perhaps even more palpable evidence of the endurance of the Jewish spirit (if not a sizable Jewish population) at the Festival of Jewish Culture (which I still expect to comment on here).

Visiting Poland gave me a poignant link to my roots - and hope for the future [...]

This was my first visit to Poland. There must have been a deep ambivalence at the heart of this delay. Poland is my roots. But Poland is the scene of terrible tragedy — mass murder on an unimaginable scale. This counterpoint — normality and tragedy, centuries of construction and a decade of destruction, heroism alongside sadism — is at the heart of the new Museum of Polish Jews that begins construction on June 30, on a site in the heart of the former Warsaw Ghetto (www.shtetl.org.pl ).

The haunting void where once was the ghetto seems permanently wrestling with present and past —when I visited, dog walkers were to be found alongside an Israeli art group.

Poland -- Cornerstone of Museum Laid

Site of new Museum. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The cornerstone of the long-awaited Museum of the History of Polish Jews was laid in Warsaw at a high-profile ceremony Tuesday. The museum, years in the making, will be located in what was the World War II Warsaw Ghetto, across from the Ghetto Heroes monument erected there in 1948.

"Prior to the Holocaust, the Shoah, Warsaw was one of the world's main centres of Jewish life where politics, culture, publishing and Jewish theatre thrived -- in fact it was the leading centre, surpassing other cities in the US and Europe," project director Jerzy Halbersztadt told guests at the site.

During the Holocaust, the district was inside the infamous Warsaw Ghetto, where all told Nazi Germany imprisoned more than 400,000 Polish Jews, many of whom died of starvation or disease or were sent to death camps.

The bricks used as the cornerstones came from the World War II-era foundations of the last headquarters of the Council of Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto, the scene of a famous wartime uprising, Halbersztadt said.

"So we have come full circle and beginning the construction of the museum is also an element of closing this circle," he added.

Read AFP story

Warsaw -- New museum construction to begin June 30

The new Museum of this History of Poland Jews has announced that construction of the building will begin June 30 at the museum site across from the 1948 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Monument.

Here's the press release:

After many years filled with devotion to the cause, after overcoming all obstacles and difficulties, construction of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews will finally begin on June 30th, 2009.

Today, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, Mayor of Warsaw, Bogdan Zdrojewski, Minister of Culture and National Heritage, and their representative Paweł Barański, Director of the Capital City Development Authority, signed a contract with Polimex-Mostostal Construction Company, which won the bid to build the Museum. Also present at contract-signing was the Museum building designer Rainer Mahlamäki. “I believe that it is one of the most interesting museum buildings in the world,” said Mayor Gronkiewicz-Waltz and added that she was glad to see the start of construction after so many years. “Today we celebrate,” rejoiced Minister Zdrojewski and thanked the Museum team for having helped to create an exceptionally refined and successful project whose execution is awaited with impatience by multitudes of people in Poland and around the world.

“I’m glad that as of today, instead of describing the exceptional museum that we will create some day, we will be able to actually show the process of its creation. I would like to thank the Mayor and the Minister for having brought us to the point where we are today. It is said that putting the investment package together, preparing and overseeing the tendering procedure, and meeting the requirements of the Public Finances Act for the purpose of funding the Museum project was more difficult than actually building the Museum. I am certain that from now on everything will go smoothly, especially since the construction will be in the hands of professionals from Polimex-Mostostal”, said Museum Director Jerzy Halbersztadt. Polimex-Mostostal Chairman Konrad Jaskóła assured that the building would be erected in 33 months as stated in the contract and asked for support all institutions engaged in building the Museum.

Last April, Polimex-Mostostal together with Interbud-West won the Museum construction tender with their bid of PLN 152 million. A competing bidder – Warbud – filed a protest on May 8th but ultimately decided not to appeal the decision. Appeal proceedings would greatly lengthen the entire process. It was also reported that the renowned multinational engineering company Ove Arup will participate in supervising construction of the Museum.

The ceremony marking the start of construction will take place on June 30th at the square in front of the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes’ Memorial. In addition to Warsaw City Hall and Culture Ministry officials and representatives of the Jewish Historical Institute Association, which initiated the Museum project and is responsible for the core exhibition, it will be attended by business partners, sponsors and numerous guests from many countries. Splendour will be added to the ceremony by the Musical Tribute to the Memory of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which will feature 100 cantors from the Cantors Assembly (USA), who that day will began their tour of Poland.

Polimex–Mostostal is the largest Polish construction engineering company. It specializes in erecting steel structures, which will come handy in construction of the unique curved wall of the Museum. In 2008, the company had a turnover of PLN 4.3 billion (15% higher than the year earlier). It is among 20 largest enterprises listed on Warsaw Stock Exchange. The company takes up grand investment projects (highways, railroads and power plants, Legia Stadium in Warsaw and Wisła Stadium in Krakow) and special cultural projects such as the Chopin Centre and Medical Academy library in Warsaw or the Art Education Centre in Gorzów Wielkopolski.

Monuments and Memorials

The site of the Warsaw Ghetto, with Ghetto monument in background. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

The site in front of the Ghetto Monument of the about-to-be-built Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Memorials to the Holocaust and to the Jewish communities destroyed in the Shoah are among the sites of Jewish heritage and memory in Europe that receive the most visitors.

I want to draw attention to two particularly thoughtful essays by Sam Gruber about their design, purpose and impact.

One is about what's missing from the Holocaust memorial in Bratislava, Slovakia. (Answer? Any information to inform the visitor what it is about.)

The other is about the complexity and changing style and emphasis of Holocaust monuments and memory in Warsaw, focuses on the Ghetto Monument, erected in 1948, the monument at Umschlagplatz, erected in 1991, and the planned new Museum of the History of Polish Jewry.

Poland -- Warsaw Museum Inches Ahead, More Quickly

The new Museum of the History of Polish Jews is one step closer to realization. The Museum reports that a contract has been signed with a Polish construction company, and actual work could commence as early as next month. The deal was made April 30.

Here's what the Museum says:

Five companies answered the call for tenders issued by the Warsaw City Development Board.The winning bid, estimating Museum construction costs at PLN 152,3 mln gross (USD 43.5 million as of 30.04.09), came from the Polimex-Mostostal/Interbud-West consortium. After accepting the offer when asked to comment, Robert Supeł, Museum Deputy Director for Finance and Operations, could not contain his excitement: “If yesterday’s decision is not contested, the contract with the consortium will be signed before the end of this month and construction will start very soon thereafter. This means that the Museum of the History of Polish Jews will open in the summer of 2012 at the latest.” Under the contract, the builder has 33 months to complete the project. After the building is completed, a few months will be devoted to equipping it and completing installation of the multimedia core exhibition – already being developed by an international team consisting of scientific experts from Poland, United States and Israel and designers from the UK.

Polimex-Mostostal is Poland’s largest engineering-construction company with experience especially in steel constructions which is very important when it comes to the construction of the unique free form wall of the Museum. The company posted an income of PLN 4.3 billion in 2008 (15% more than in 2007) and is among the 20 blue chip companies quoted on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. It carries out both large construction and industrial projects (motorways, railways, power plants, Legia stadium in Warsaw, Wisła stadium in Kraków) as well as special cultural projects (the Chopin Centre and the University Medical Library in Warsaw, the Artistic Education centre in Gorzów Wielkopolski).

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Warsaw, 9.05.2009

Warbud S.A. which also participated in the tender filed an appeal on May 8. The company’s offer was worth PLN 163.3 million. The appeal is under consideration. It should be resolved within 10 days.

Poland -- Jan Jagielski Wins Award

Jan Jagielski in Warsaw Jewish Cemetery, 1993. Photo (c) Sam Gruber

I'm delighted to learn that my old friend, Jan Jagielski, has been awarded the second annual Irena Sendler Memorial Award by the Taube Foundation. The award, named in honor of a Righteous Gentile who saves Jewish children in Warsaw during the Holocaust, honors rescuers of Jewish Heritage in Poland.

Janek, whom I met back in 1981, when I was the UPI chief correspondent in Warsaw and we were both part of the semi-clandestine "Flying Jewish University" study and culture group there, is chief archivist at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw and -- as the Taube Foundation put it "a role model for all those who work to salvage and redeem the glory of Poland's Jewish legacy."

Born in 1937, he is a chemical engineer by training. He undertook his personal mission to document synagogues and Jewish cemeteries in, if I recall correctly, the 1960s. It was a way to -- as he and others put it -- literally fill in the blank spaces left by communist policy and regain part of Polish history and identity that had been destroyed by the Nazis and deliberately suppressed by the communist regime.

Back in 1990, when I first started documenting Jewish sites for the first edition of Jewish Heritage Travel, I vividly recall visiting him in his cramped apartment, in a prefab building on the site of the Warsaw Ghetto. It was stuffed, crammed, filled to overflowing, with boxes of photographs, maps and files that he had compiled.

Over the years, Jan often worked with Lena Bergman, who is now the director of the Jewish Historical Institute. He and Lena wrote a catalogue book on synagogues in Poland that came out in the mid-1990s. They also were instrumental in compiling the first comprehensive inventory of Jewish cemeteries in Poland, a project of the Jewish Heritage Council of the World Monuments Fund on behalf of the United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad. Sam Gruber, who coordinated this project, wrote recently about Jan on his blog.

Jan, who also produced various detailed Jewish guidebooks to Warsaw, as well as other publications, has be recognized with a number of awards in recent years.

Mazel Tov, Janek!

Here's the Taube Foundation press release:

ARCHIVIST JAN JAGIELSKI RECEIVES SECOND ANNUAL IRENA SENDLER MEMORIAL AWARD

Award Commemorates “Righteous Gentile” Sendler and Honors Rescuers of Jewish Heritage in Poland

SAN FRANCISCO – Jan Jagielski, a Polish archivist, who has spent his professional career working to document and preserve Jewish monuments in Poland, although he himself is not Jewish, has been named the 2009 recipient of the Irena Sendler Memorial Award by the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture in San Francisco. The award is granted to a non-Jewish Pole who has worked to preserve Jewish heritage in Poland, in memory of the late Irena Sendler, a “Righteous Gentile” who courageously saved over 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. The award was announced on the first anniversary of Sendler’s passing and will be presented at the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow on July 1, 2009.

Jagielski, chief archivist at the newly renamed Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, was the first to initiate in the pre-1989 Communist era a project to document and ultimately preserve what remained of Jewish monuments in Poland. A non-Jewish Pole by origin, a chemical engineer by profession, his only motivation was his pain at seeing a part of his country's heritage go to ruin and oblivion. Acting alone and only in his personal capacity at first, he photographed neglected cemeteries and ruined synagogues and started to collect documentation on their former appearance and importance.

Since the fall of Communism in 1989, Jagielski has co-produced, with the City of Warsaw, excellent guidebooks to Warsaw's prewar Jewish history. Today, he leads a new major conservation program at Warsaw’s Jewish Historical Institute. Jan Jagielski remains one of Poland's top authorities on Jewish monuments and is a role model for all those who work to salvage and redeem the glory of Poland's Jewish legacy.

“The symbiotic relationship between Jewish culture and Polish culture cannot be overstated,” said Tad Taube, Honorary Consul for the Republic of Poland and chairman of the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture. “Jan Jagielski understands the importance of preserving Jewish history in Poland against the backdrop of today’s vibrant Jewish renaissance."

The Jewish community in Poland has come back to life in the 20 years since the fall of Communism in 1989, with synagogues and community centers being built all across the country and many Poles connecting with Jewish roots they did not know they possessed. Jewish culture is embraced by Jews and non-Jews alike; this is evidenced in the great popularity of the Jewish Cultural Festival in Krakow, celebrated in large part by non-Jews.

This award was founded last year to commemorate Irena Sendler, who passed on May 12, 2008 in Warsaw at the age of 98. Sendler, who saved twice as many Jews as Oskar Schindler during World War II, refused to give up the identities of the children she had rescued, even when captured and tortured by the Nazis. Sendler’s heroic actions went largely unnoticed until ten years ago when several Kansas school girls wrote a play about her. In 2007 she was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

“Irena was a true hero to the Jewish community of Poland, and we believe that honoring her legacy with this award is very meaningful,” said Taube. “We hope that honoring people like Jan Jagielski who continue to work diligently for the preservation of Jewish history and culture in Poland is a fitting tribute.”

Nominations for the award were reviewed by a panel made up of foundation staff and grantees involved with the Polish Jewish community.

For more information, email: info@taubephilanthropies.org.

Warsaw -- Useful (Downloadable) Jewish Travel Brochure

Panel on Jewish shtetl life from an open-air exhibition in Warsaw, 2008. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

A very useful illustrated Jewish travel guide to Warsaw is available from the Warsaw tourism office. You can get the illustrated brochure at tourist offices there or download a PDF of it by clicking HERE. (The link takes you to the English/Polish edition -- there is also an edition in Spanish and Italian.)

The brochure, which features a picture of the Nozyk synagogue on its cover, was edited by Jan Jagielski of the Jewish Historical Institute -- one of most knowledgeable experts on Warsaw's Jewish history and heritage sites. Jan's an old friend. He was a pioneer in the documentation of Jewish heritage in Poland, and back 1990 he co-wrote a more detailed guide to Jewish Warsaw that I used extensively in my own work and travels.

The new brochure, published last summer, includes photographs and descriptions of 28 sites around the city and also includes links for Jewish organizations and information on Jewish cultural events.

Brightly colored, it is one of a series of new brochures on various aspects of Warsaw, all using the same general format.

Singer Festival in Warsaw Sept. 6-14

The fifth annual Singer's Warsaw Festival of Jewish Culture takes place Sept. 6-14. The program is a rich mix of performance, workshops, book presentations and lectures -- most of which, however, seem to be in Polish.

Music stars this year include the Klezmatics, Yale Strom, and Chava Alberstein.

The Festival (which coincides with the European Day of Jewish Culture, Sept. 7) includes various open air events and a street fair that takes place in and around Prozna Street, the semi-ruined block in downtown Warsaw that is just about the only piece of the Warsaw ghetto area to have survived World War II. There have been ongoing debates for years about what to do with Prozna; whether and to preserve it, whether it should form the center of a Jewish life museum, etc.

I was encouraged to see that there is now an upscale little cafe and gallery functioning in Prozna, as well as a couple of other businesses. For the festival, many of the bricked-up windows have been covered with pictures of pre-war Jews.

The Singer festival is sponsored by the Shalom Foundation, headed by the Lodz-born Yiddish singer Golda Tencer. Tencer's husband, Szymon Szurmiej, directs Warsaw's State Jewish Theater. The Festival this year includes celebrations for his 85th birthday. Shalom supports many Yiddish-language oriented projects, including a web site called yiddishland.pl