Associated Press
March 16, 2009
Poland to present Jewish history in exhibit at EU
By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — A new exhibi- tion by the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw brings together photos and doc- uments depicting the rich history of 1,000 years of Jewish life in Poland.
The exhibition, previewed Monday in Warsaw, goes on display April 1 at the European Parliament in Brussels and will run nearly a week.
With old paintings and photographs, the show recalls how Jews found refuge in Poland during the Middle Ages after being expelled from many parts of Europe. It also stresses the mark the community made on the larger, mainly Roman Catholic Polish commu- nity.
That knowledge is little known outside Poland, said European Parliament lawmaker Ryszard Czarnecki, who came up with the idea for the exhibition.
"People in the West know — and very rightly so — about the Holocaust, but they don't know what was before the Holocaust, the hundreds of years of a very rich history," Czarnecki said. "The Jews had their significant share in creating the Polish state, its economy, architecture, culture and art."
The institute drew from its archives to present religious Jews, synagogues and Yiddish- language newspapers and posters.
A portrait gallery recalls prominent Polish Jews, including filmmaker Roman Polanski, the late chess champion Akiba Rubinstein and the pianist Artur Rubinstein.
The exhibit is one of several efforts by Polish leaders to fight stereotypes that the na- tion remains anti-Semitic, more than six decades after most of the nation's roughly 3.5 million Jews were either murdered in the Nazi Holocaust or emigrated.
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