RAINER MAHLAMÄKI and His POLIN Building at the 10th anniversary of the Museum
Special Essay by Inna Rogatchi with an Exclusive Interview
The Phenomenon of the POLIN
Almost a decade ago, my husband and I stepped inside the POLIN Museum in Warsaw for the first time, soon after its opening, yet before meeting its architect in person. We have had a lot of various cultural and memorial projects in Poland from the beginning of the 2000s onward, and knew from all sides, inside and very much outside Poland of the forthcoming museum which was awaited with unprecedented eagerness.
There was a very solid reason for that. Historically, there was no more Jewish country in the world than Poland was for centuries until 1939, with almost 3.5 million Jews, 10% of the country’s population, living there for generations. Before the Second World War, 60% of the world Jewry lived in Europe, and 37% of them were living in Poland, making up to 21% of the entire world Jewry at the time. The post-war figure is devastating. Surviving the Shoah was 6.85% of the great Polish Jewry.
We all, from Warsaw to New York, and from Lublin to Sydney, were eagerly awaiting for the place where this super-rich, organic to the core and the same painful, deeply dramatic story would be finally told.
From the Polish end, the idea about the museum originated at the noble and brave Historical Jewish Institute, with the work on its fulfillment started by a devoted committee in 1993-1994. It took twenty years of a sternly-focused effort of many people to make it happen.
In the expectations of so many, POLIN was a gesture of fairness, a diary, a song, an identity story coming out of a very long hiding and suppressing, a chance for decency, a dream, a gravestone for numerous souls left without it. It was a hope and it was a necessity. Continue Reading….
