Museum of the History of Polish Jews

Museum Polin
(Museum of the History of Polish Jews)

• Mordechaja Anielewicza 6, 00-157 Warszawa (Śródmieście, Muranów)
• Opened: October 28, 2014

The facility’s proper name is Museum Polin, referring to a legend about the arrival of the first Jewish settlers in the 13th century fleeing persecutions in western Europe. The fugitives supposedly heard a voice in the wilderness calling “Po-lin,” which in Hebrew means “you should rest here.”

The award-winning building, designed by the Lahdelma & Mahlamaki Oy architectural studio in Helsinki, Finland, stands on the site of Warsaw’s World War II-era Jewish ghetto. It was first opened to the public on April 19, 2013 to mark the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Museum of the History of Polish Jews - Hebrew and Latin letters of the word "Polin" (Hebrew for "Poland" or "you will rest here") on the façade

Main hall

Poland’s Jewish population grew to 3.3 million on the eve of World War II, of whom about 90 percent perished in the Holocaust. Many of the survivors emigrated after the war, in part to escape communist-era persecution.

A replica of the ceiling of Gwozdziec’s 18th-century synagogue, a key exhibit in Warsaw’s new museum of Jewish history (now Ukraine)

An external view of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews

Chopin Museum Warsaw (Ostrogski Palace)

• Okólnik 1, Warszawa, Poland
• Phone: +48 22 441 62 51
• https://chopin.museum/en

The Fryderyk Chopin Museum (Polish: Muzeum Fryderyka Chopina) is a museum in Warsaw, Poland, established in 1954 and dedicated to Polish composer Frédéric Chopin. 
The museum has two branches: Birthplace of Frédéric Chopin, at Żelazowa Wola; and Chopin Family Parlor, on Krakowskie Przedmieście, Warsaw.

The museum underwent a complete renovation in 2010 during which a state of the art multimedia exhibition was installed. Featuring an open floor plan and interactive displays, the museum brings to life the music of one of Poland’s greatest sons. Described as “very clean and modern” the Chopin Museum is “a beautiful and insightful tribute to Poland’s greatest composer.” Great for children and adults alike.

Marie Curie's birthplace & museum

Marie's Curie's birthplace on ulica Freta 16 in Warsaw's "New Town" – now home to the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Museum

• Address: ul Freta 16 (Nowe Miasto)

Maria Skłodowska was born in Warsaw, in the Russian partition of Poland, on 7 November 1867, the fifth and youngest child of well-known teachers Bronisława and Władysław Skłodowski.

Marie Curie was the first woman to win a Nobel prize and the first person to win two Nobel Prizes.

• Nobel Prize in Physics (1903)
• Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1911)

Maria Skłodowska at 15

Perhaps the most famous of all women scientists, Maria Sklodowska-Curie is notable for her many firsts:

• She was the first to use the term radioactivity for this phenomenon.
• She was the first woman in Europe to receive her doctorate of science.
• In 1903, she became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize for Physics. The award, jointly awarded to Curie, her husband Pierre, and Henri Becquerel, was for the discovery of radioactivity.
• She was also the first female lecturer, professor and head of Laboratory at the Sorbonne University in Paris (1906).
• In 1911, she won an unprecedented second Nobel Prize (this time in chemistry) for her discovery and isolation of pure radium and radium components. She was the first person ever to receive two Nobel Prizes.
• She was the first mother-Nobel Prize Laureate of daughter-Nobel Prize Laureate. Her oldest daughter Irene Joliot-Curie also won a Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1935).
• She is the first woman which has been laid to rest under the famous dome of the Pantheon in Paris for her own merits.

Marie Curie in her lab

The Marie Curie Museum is an 18th-century building where Marie Curie,Maria Skłodowska,was born.

Polish banknotes

It would be a beautiful thing, a thing I dare not hope, if we could spend our life near each other, hypnotized by our dreams: your patriotic dream, our humanitarian dream, and our scientific dream. [Pierre Curie to Maria Skłodowska]

Zacheta National Gallery of Art

Zacheta

• Address: Plac Małachowskiego 3, Warsaw
• Open Hours: Tue to Sun from 12:00 PM to 08:00 PM
• Website: zacheta.art.pl
• Phone: +48 22 827 5854, +48 22 556 96 00

Zacheta gallery was built in 1900 as the headquarters for the Warsaw Fine Arts Society, who were active in promoting and popularizing Polish talent. The building was designed by Stefan Szyller and its architecture is predominantly Renaissance with classical elements. Originally, only part of the design was actually finished, but in 1998 a new wing was added. During the Second World War, the gallery's collection was sent to the National Gallery for safe keeping, but it was never returned and the Zachêta now hosts high quality temporary contemporary art exhibitions.

Museum of the History of Polish Jews

A museum on the history of Polish Jews has made huge strides toward its planned opening next year thanks to several million dollars in new donations announced this week, officials said Wednesday.

The Museum of the History of Polish Jews, going up in the heart of the former Warsaw Ghetto, will narrate the 1,000-year history of Jews in Poland. It is a history that is unknown to many and that has been overshadowed by the tragedy of the Holocaust, which was carried out by Germany in occupied Poland.
The highly anticipated museum is expected to open in the fall of 2013, in the 70th anniversary year of the doomed Warsaw ghetto uprising.

A worker polishes a recently restored monument to the fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which stands across from the nearly finished Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, Poland, on Wednesday, July 4, 2012. Officials on Wednesday said the museum has made huge progress toward its planned opening next year thanks to several million dollars in new donations announced 

The museum said it received a joint $7-million donation from the Koret Foundation and the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture, California-based philanthropies chaired by Tad Taube, a Polish-born American businessman.

Jan Kulczyk, a Polish oil tycoon, also announced a gift of 20 million Polish zlotys ($6 million) this week.
Museum officials hailed the gifts Wednesday, saying the money will allow them to finish the museum’s core exhibition, a multimedia space that will guide visitors chronologically from the Middle Ages to the present day.

Until shortly before the Holocaust, there were about 3.5 million Jews living in Poland, the largest Jewish community in the world and the land of ancestry for many Jews living across the world today. Polish Jews were also about 10 percent of the larger population of Poland, and they made significant contributions to Polish culture, science and politics.

“There is no history of Poland without the Jews and no history of Jews without Poland,” said Piotr Wislicki, the chairman of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland.

The museum says it expects to become Europe’s largest Jewish history museum and an institution that will “take its place alongside the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem as one of the most important institutions of its kind.”

“The key difference is that the Museum of the History of Polish Jews will extend the historical narrative beyond the Holocaust to encompass an epic Jewish heritage — from which the majority of world Jewry descends and that, even today, shapes contemporary Jewish life all across the globe,” the museum said.

Uroczystość wmurowania aktu erekcyjnego Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich przez prezydenta RP Lecha Kaczyńskiego 26 czerwca 2007