Warsaw Jewish museum to be 'centre of dialogue'

Mayor of Warsaw Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz (R) and President Bronislaw Komorowski (C) visit the museum together with other dignitaries, on the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: photo - PAP/Bartlomiej Zborowski

“We want to create a centre of dialogue and discussion,” said Lucja Koch from the museum's educational department, in an interview with Polish Radio.

“That's why – rather symbolically – there are five bridges in this building,” she noted.

“They connect different spaces. We want to connect the past with the present.”

The permanent exhibition will not be finished until late 2013 at the earliest, but the institution is opening its doors to the public today and tomorrow, as part of the events marking the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the doomed Jewish insurgency against the Nazi German occupier.

“We want to remind the younger generations about [what was] a multi-ethnic Poland,” Koch continued.

“We are not going to this by falsifying history, and by presenting this as all one great, beautiful story, because that's not how it was,” she stressed.

“Polish-Jewish history was terribly difficult,” she said. (nh)