Polish museum to highlight Jewish life before Holocaust (News Feature)

By Dominika Maslikowski Jun 30, 2009, 14:23 GMT

Warsaw - Many know Poland as the site of Nazi death camps, but a new museum aims to highlight the long and vibrant history of Polish Jews before the Holocaust.

The Museum of the History of Polish Jews is set to open in 2011 at the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto. Officials broke ground Tuesday on the massive, 12,000-square-metre facility costing 144 million dollars.

But unlike museums in Jerusalem and Washington D.C., the Holocaust will only be a part of the Polish museum that will narrate some 1,000 years of Jewish presence in the country.

And it's the lives and culture of Polish Jews that need to be remembered as much as their tragic deaths, officials said.

'It's about how a people lived among another people and created and flourished and blossomed, and how totalitarianism destroyed that,' Poland's chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich told the German Press Agency dpa.

'If all we do is remember how the Jews were killed, in some ways we're denying their humanity.'

The museum will teach how a minority can perpetuate and even deepen their culture, Schudrich said, and will aim to remember both the lives of Polish Jews, and the genocide that destroyed them.

The sleek building will face a monument to the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto, who led a doomed insurgency from the walled-off sector against occupying Nazi forces. It will stand as a testament to life in a spot marked by death, Warsaw's mayor said, and will celebrate the common life of Jews and Poles.

Poland's Jews began arriving in medieval times to escape religious persecution across Europe. Poland soon became the religious and cultural center for the largest Jewish community in the world. Before Hitler's invasion, Jewish culture intertwined to become part of Poland's own past.

And it's that vibrant history that's often little known to those visiting Poland.

David Kamenir, of Los Angeles, said his trip to Warsaw was a once in a lifetime experience. Kamenir played piano at a concert of some 50 cantors held Tuesday at the museum's groundbreaking.

The trip allowed Kamenir to explore his roots, and learn about a history that often goes unnoticed.

'I found out this trip that my heritage is not from Kiev,' Kamenir said. 'I figured out last night that I'm basically Polish.'

'It's very meaningful that you have a rebirth and a memory in place of the bad memories,' he said. 'I myself didn't know enough. And by this trip, I learned how vibrant it was before the Holocaust because of the music, culture, and all the life here.'