The Galicia Jewish Museum ( Polish: ''Żydowskie Muzeum Galicja'') is located in the historic

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

district of

Kazimierz Kazimierz (; la, Casimiria; yi, קוזמיר, Kuzimyr) is a historical district of Kraków and Kraków Old Town, Poland. From its inception in the 14th century to the early 19th century, Kazimierz was an independent city, a royal city of the ...

Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...

, Poland. It is a photo exhibition documenting the remnants of Jewish culture and life in Polish Galicia, which used to be very vibrant in this area.

History

The Museum was established in April 2004 by the British

photojournalist Photojournalism is journalism that uses images to tell a news story. It usually only refers to still images, but can also refer to video used in broadcast journalism. Photojournalism is distinguished from other close branches of photography (such ...

Chris Schwarz (whose father originated from

Lwów Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in western Ukraine, and the seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is one of the main cultural centres of Ukraine ...

), in cooperation with Professor Jonathan Webber of UNESCO, in an effort to celebrate the Jewish culture of the Polish Galicia and commemorate the victims of

the Holocaust in Poland The Holocaust in Poland was part of the European-wide Holocaust organized by Nazi Germany and took place in German-occupied Poland. During the genocide, three million Polish Jews were murdered, half of all Jews murdered during the Holocaust. ...

. Following Schwarz' early death in 2007, Kate Craddy became the director of the Museum. She was followed by Jakub Nowakowski in 2010. Both English and Polish have remained the Museum's main operating languages. The museum welcomes over 30,000 visitors annually from around the world.

Exhibitions

The main exhibition of the Museum, ''Traces of Memory'', is the result of a twelve-year collaboration between photographer and museum founder Chris Schwarz and British scholar Jonathan Webber. It commemorates the 800-year Jewish presence in western Galicia (today's southeastern Poland) through contemporary photographs of

synagogue A synagogue, ', 'house of assembly', or ', "house of prayer"; Yiddish: ''shul'', Ladino: or ' (from synagogue); or ', "community". sometimes referred to as shul, and interchangeably used with the word temple, is a Jewish house of worshi ...

cemeteries A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite or graveyard is a place where the remains of dead people are buried or otherwise interred. The word ''cemetery'' (from Greek , "sleeping place") implies that the land is specifically designated as a buri ...

and other relics of the Jewish presence in the region still visible today. The exhibition is divided into five sections, representing different ways of approaching the Jewish past in Polish Galicia: ''Jewish Life in Ruins'', ''Jewish Culture as it Once Was'', ''The Holocaust: Sites of Massacre and Destruction'', ''How the Past is Being Remembered'' and ''People Making Memory Today''. A part of the exhibition is dedicated to

Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

. In 2008, the Museum collaborated with the Auschwitz Jewish Center to create the exhibition ''Polish Heroes'', which focuses on the

Polish Righteous Among the Nations The citizens of Poland have the world's highest count of individuals who have been recognized by Yad Vashem of Jerusalem as the Polish Righteous Among the Nations, for saving Jews from extermination during the Holocaust in World War II. There a ...

. Today, the exhibition can be seen in six museums across

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

and the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

The Galicia Jewish Museum has two permanent exhibition spaces, and hosts two to three temporary exhibitions covering a range of materials that complement the mission of the museum, curated both in-house and sourced externally, and including modern art on Jewish themes. The Museum is also the venue of choice for many international travelling exhibitions coming to Central Europe for the first time, and is an experienced tour manager for exhibitions travelling in both Poland and overseas.

Past exhibits

''Soshana – collector of Worlds''. The exhibition presented paintings by Soshana (born 1927 in Vienna), an Austrian artist of Jewish descent, whose output received international acclaim. This was the first exposition of her works in Poland. For Soshana, painting was always (and still is) the fundamental way of experiencing and expressing the world, a way to enter into a dialogue with reality. In 2013, the museum also housed ''Empty Void – photographs from Próżna Street''; and Gil Cohen-Magen's ''In Hasidic Circles''; preceded by the ethnographic ''Souvenir, Talisman, Toy'' (curated by

Erica Lehrer Erica Lehrer (born 1969) is an anthropologist, curator, and academic specializing in post-Holocaust Jewish culture, museum studies, ethnography, and public scholarship. She is Associate Professor of History and Sociology/Anthropology at Concordi ...

, exploring Jewish figurines included "

Lucky Jew The Jew with a coin (, also little Jew (), or lucky Jew ()) is a good luck charm in Poland, where images or figurines of the character, usually accompanied by a proverb, are said to bring good fortune, particularly financially. For most Poles ...

" figurines); the Roz Jacobs' ''Memory Project'', hailed as extraordinary by

Agnieszka Holland Agnieszka Holland (born 28 November 1948) is a Poles, Polish film and television director and screenwriter, best known for her political contributions to Polish cinema. She began her career as assistant to directors Krzysztof Zanussi and Andrzej ...

; ''Street art Jewish style'' murals inspired by the Jewish culture; and the ''21x21'' profile of 21 Jewish personalities of contemporary Kraków by Bartolomeo Koczenasz, co-produced with the Jewish Community Centre (JCC). In 2012, exhibitions included ''Anxiety'' Holocaust art of Ryszard Apte; and ''On the Other Side of the Torah'' Wartime Portraits from

Tübingen Tübingen (, , Swabian: ''Dibenga'') is a traditional university city in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, and developed on both sides of the Neckar and Ammer rivers. about one in thr ...

with audio and video; ''Wherever I Go, I'm Always Going to Jerusalem...'' by the School of Fine Arts in Częstochowa competition winners; and photographs of Cracovian Jews ''Poland and Palestine: Two Lands and Two Skies'' by Ze’ev (Wilhelm) Aleksandrowicz who was born in Kraków in 1905, and died in Tel Aviv in 1992. In 2011, exhibitions included ''Portraits of an Intellectual and Political Landscape'' sculptural-paintings and serigraphs by Bernard Aptekar from New York City; photography by

Yoram Gross Yoram Jerzy Gross (18 October 192621 September 2015) was a Polish-born, Australian producer of children's and family entertainment. He was known for his adaptation of children's characters from books and films, and best known for the produc ...

in ''Look Closer''; and works by renown American artist Fay Grajower, member of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, entitled ''Bletern: Images and Words'' devoted to Polish Yiddish women poets.

Activities

The museum provides opportunities for groups to meet with local recipients of the

Awards as well as Holocaust and concentration camp survivors. In addition to tours and meetings, the museum's education centre offers workshops, lectures, and seminars on

Jewish religion Judaism ( he, ''Yahăḏūṯ'') is an Abrahamic, monotheistic, and ethnic religion comprising the collective religious, cultural, and legal tradition and civilization of the Jewish people. It has its roots as an organized religion in the M ...

and culture and the Holocaust for different age groups. It is one of the only providers in southern Poland to offer Holocaust education classes on a permanent basis for visiting schools. The museum regularly hosts

klezmer Klezmer ( yi, קלעזמער or ) is an instrumental musical tradition of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. The essential elements of the tradition include dance tunes, ritual melodies, and virtuosic improvisations played for l ...

concerts and other cultural events. In 2010, the Galicia Jewish Museum became an official partner of the

Austrian Service Abroad The Austrian Service Abroad is a non-profit organization founded by Andreas Hörtnagl, Andreas Maislinger and Michael Prochazka in 1998, which sends young Austrians to work in partner institutions worldwide serving Holocaust commemoration in f ...

References

External links