Warsaw - POLIN museum
POLIN - Museum of the history of Polish Jews (visit on Wednesday 15th August 2018)
The idea to create a Museum of the History of Polish Jews emerged at the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute. This idea soon secured support both in Poland and abroad. Because of the generous help of individual and institutional donors from all over the world, the works on a project of the Museum commenced in 1995 and continued as a social initiative until 2005. It was then that the Museum of the History of Polish Jews was formally instituted under the auspices of the President of the Republic of Poland, Aleksander Kwaśniewski.
POLIN Museum (Polish: Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich) is a museum on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto. The Hebrew word Polin in the museum's English name means either "Poland" or "rest here" and relates to a legend about the arrival of the first Jews to Poland.
The museum's cornerstone was laid in 2007, and the museum opened on 19 April 2013. The core exhibition opened in October 2014 and features a multimedia exhibition about the Jewish community that flourished in Poland for a thousand years up to the World War II Holocaust. The building, a postmodern structure in glass, copper, and concrete, was designed by Finnish architects Rainer Mahlamäki and Ilmari Lahdelma.
