Museum of the History of Polish Jews dedicated at last

I view the spectacular painted Gwozdziec ceiling

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

This post also appears in my En Route blog for the LA Jewish Journal.

I've been in Warsaw for events marking the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising -- and  filed a story for JTA on the "soft" opening of the long-awaited, long-delayed Museum of the History of Polish Jews.

Though I am not in love with the exterior of the buildng -- except for its location opposite the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes Memorial -- I was very impressed with the interior. In particular the way the big glass gash of an entrance frames the memorial when you look out from inside.

For me, who has followed the development of the museum for nearly 20 years, it was a rather emotional (and emotionally satisfying) moment to finally be inside -- and to connect and reconnect with so many people I've encountered here in Poland since the 1980s.

WARSAW, Poland (JTA) -- Krzysztof Sliwinski, a longtime Catholic activist in Jewish-Polish relations, gazed wide-eyed at the swooping interior of this city's Museum of the History of Polish Jews. 

Nearly two decades in the making, the more than $100 million institution officially opens to the public this week amid a month of high-profile, state-sponsored events marking the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. 

“It’s incredible, incredible, incredible how things have changed,” Sliwinski told JTA. “I remember commemorations of the ghetto uprising under communism when only a few people showed up. How good it was that we were optimistic.”

Sliwinski organized Jewish cemetery cleanups and other pro-Jewish initiatives under communism, when Jewish practice and culture were suppressed by the regime. 

In 1995, then-Foreign Minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, an Auschwitz survivor, appointed him post-Communist Poland’s first official ambassador to the Jewish Diaspora, part of the state’s unprecedented outreach policy. 

On Sunday, both Sliwinski, now 73, and Bartoszewski, 91, joined hundreds of local Jews and other VIPs as Poland’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, unveiled a mezuzah at the museum’s main entrance.

Read the full story

In writing this piece, it was fascinating to go back and see what I -- and others -- had written back in the 1990s.

New York Times 1996 piece on opposition/ambivalence regarding the museum project
My 1996 story on Sliwinski as Poland's ambassador to the Jewish Diaspora

Wonderful Exhibit in Warsaw of Gwozdziec synagogue panels

A version of this post appeared on my En Route blog for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal

Preview of the Exhibition. Photo courtesy of Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

A wonderful exhibition opens today at the Arkady Kubickiego (Kubicki Arcade) of the Royal Castle in Warsaw and runs til the end of the month—the colorful ceiling panels that have been painted this summer as part of the Gwozdiec synagogue reconstruction project.

The reconstruction of an 85 percent scale model of the tall peaked roof and richly decorated inner cupola of the wooden synagogue that once stood in Gwozdziec (now in Ukraine) is a project of the Handshouse Studio and the forthcoming Museum of the History of Polish Jews—I wrote about the first stages of the project last summer, when students, master timber-framers and volunteers gathered in Sanok, southeastern Poland, to build the structure, using hand tools that would have been used centuries ago. The reconstructed roof and cupola will be a major installation at the new Museum, which is due to open in the autumn of 2013.

Its elaborate structure and the intricate painted decoration on the cupola ceiling will reproduce a form of architectural and artistic expression that was wiped out in World War II, when the Nazis put the torch to some 200 wooden synagogues in Eastern Europe. Many of them, like that in Gwozdziec, were centuries old and extraordinarily elaborate, with tiered roofs and richly decorative interior painting. 

The Gwozdziec Synagogue, built in the 17th and 18th centuries, was a “truly resplendent synagogue that exemplified a high point in Jewish architectural art and religious painting,” the architectural historian Thomas C. Hubka, an expert on the building, has written.

This summer, at workshops held in synagogues around Poland, teams of students and volunteers have been carrying out the colorful, elaborate paintings that cover in the interior of the cupola—and it is these that will be displayed for the next two weeks in Warsaw.

It’s terrific—and fascinating—work, and this will be a rare chance to see the panels up close before they are mounted as part of the cupola installation!

Poland -- Sanok. Gwozdziec synagogue project

Laura Brown, co-director of Handshouse Studio, with replica of Gwozdziec synagogue. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Earlier this month I spent several days in Sanok, in the far southeastern corner of Poland, visiting the site of the Gwozdziec synagogue project -- the construction of a replica of the roof and decorated inner cupola of the destroyed wooden synagogue of Gwozdziec (now in Ukraine) -- one of about 200 wooden synagogues torched by the Nazis in World War II

The article I wrote about it for the International Herald Tribune/New York Time online  is now readable  -- click HERE to read the full story

In the far southeast corner of Poland, the warm summer air is resounding with the rasp of old-fashioned iron saws and the satisfying twack-twack-twack of ax blades on wood.

Here, in the foothills of the Carpathians, an international crew of master timber craftsmen and students has been working on an intensely hands-on project that combines history, art and education. They are building a replica of the tall peaked roof and inner cupola of an ornate wooden synagogue that stood for 300 years in the town of Gwozdziec, now in Ukraine.

The replica, which will be 85 percent of the original size of the building, will be installed as one of the key components of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, currently under construction in Warsaw and scheduled to open in 2013.

The article gives pretty much of an overview of the project, run by the Massachusetts-based Handshouse Studio -- and if you want detailed descriptions of the process, Edward Levin, of the Timber Framers Guild, has been keeping a wonderful blog about it all, with lots of pictures and theoretical musings. Click HERE to read it.

My discussions in Sanok opened a new world to me -- that of Timber Framing and master carpentry; people involved who find spirituality in working with wood. Fascinating discussions.

Here are some of my own pictures of the project, which is being carried out on the grounds of the Sanok open-air folk architecture museum.