A new beginning

After more than 10 years of preparation and massive fund-raising campaigns around the world, the groundbreaking ceremony for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews (MHPJ) will take place on June 26. The ceremony will be attended by Polish President Lech Kaczyński, Warsaw Mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz and Israeli President Shimon Peres, who is also chairman of the International Honorary Committee of the Museum. Construction of the MHPJ is expected to cost $58 (zł.163.5) million.

The museum, which is to open in 2010, has the ambitious goal of presenting the history of the Polish Jews, who constituted 10 percent of Poland's population before WWII, from a different angle. "We want the museum to be much more than just a building with historical showpieces," says MHPJ's Judyta Nekanda-Trepka. The MHPJ aims to become an institution where 1,000 years of interaction between the Jewish and Polish cultures will be presented in a modern way.

Eight galleries, occupying 4,300 sqm, will show the most significant historical periods for Polish Jewry. The MHPJ, however, will differ from the prominent Jewish museums in New York and Berlin, where the Holocaust plays a central role. "Of course we will refer to the Holocaust as a milestone in the history of the Polish Jews, but we are also going to concentrate on the future, through a broad dialog which the museum wants to inspire," Nekanda-Trepka adds.

The design competition for the project was won by Finnish architect Rainer Mahlamaki, whose proposal was chosen over those of other international architects, including Daniel Libeskind, who designed the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Warsaw's museum will have a passageway through the middle designed to resemble the parting of the Red Sea during the exodus of the Jews from Egypt. The deciding factor in the project's success, according to the jury, was its powerful expression of the historical drama to be presented in the museum as well as the lasting internal tension.