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.