STORY

Winner of the 2016 European Museum of the Year Award, POLIN Museum is the only museum in the world dedicated to recovering the memory of Polish Jews. Located on the site of the Warsaw ghetto and prewar Jewish neighborhood, POLIN Museum faces the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes.

Its multimedia narrative exhibition presents the thousand year history of Polish Jews and the civilization they created. This is a legacy for future generations and call for dialogue in the spirit of mutual understanding and respect.

POLIN Museum was created as a private public partnership of the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland, which initiated the project, and the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the City of Warsaw. During its first five years of operation, POLIN Museum attracted more than 4 million visitors.

THE IDEA

The idea to create the Museum of the History of Polish Jews originated at the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute and gradually garnered widespread approval both in Poland and abroad. In 1995, thanks to the support of individual and institutional donors, work on the project of the Museum began and continued - as a social initiative - until 2005.

On 25 January 2005, long-term efforts of the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland finally bore fruit. On that day, on the initiative of then Mayor of Warsaw Lech Kaczyński, the Museum was formally established as a public-private partnership of the Association of JHI, the City of Warsaw, and the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

The Association was responsible for financing and organizing the process of preparation of the core exhibition until the opening of the Museum in October 2014.