Building of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw
© Wojciech Kryński / commons.wikimedia.org
The museum boom has been one of the most interesting phenomena in Polish memory culture over past two decades. To some extent, it is an answer to questions in domestic debates. It should be also considered as an adaptation to the “memory boom” observed in Western countries from the 1980s. More recently, with the growing polarization in Poland, museums have tended to fall victim to political and memory disputes.
After the collapse of communism in Poland in 1989, memory politics seemed to be of last importance to consecutive governments. The first decade of democratic transformation was a time when urgent economic needs and political decisions to anchor the republic in the Western community caused interest in history to fade.
The situation changed in the early 2000s. International memory disputes and internal history debates led to the emergence of a new memory politics. In 2004, the conservative mayor of Warsaw, Lech Kaczyński, opened the Warsaw Rising Museum, 60 years after thousands of insurgents of the Home Army staged a tragic and failed attempt to liberate the capital. The new exhibition became an enormous success. It was the first museum of a new type in Poland, with modern exhibitions based on storytelling principles and using multimedia and scenography extensively. The museum also entered the field of culture and pop culture by organizing concerts and theatrical performances as well as attracting visual artists.
But, if one considers the launching of initiatives rather than opening dates, the first manifestation of this new thinking about museums concerned the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw.
Shortly after the inauguration of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in the United States in 1993, one of the Jewish leaders in Poland, Grazyna Pawlak, promoted the idea that there was a need to create a museum of “Jewish life” in the country. Poland was for many centuries the religious and cultural center of the Ashkenazi Jews, and later a venue where modern Jewish national identity was formed. Meanwhile, in recent decades, many Jews from around the world had come to Poland and visited only Holocaust memory sites while having no idea about the flourishing Jewish life in past ages. An institution recalling the history of Polish Jews was also important for Poles, who often had poor awareness of their country’s multiethnic history and of the Jewish contribution to its culture.
The museum was an initiative of the Association Jewish Historical Institute. In 2004, it signed an agreement to finance the construction with Kaczyński and the minister of culture in the left-wing government, Waldemar Dąbrowski. The museum opened in 2014.
In 2005, the mayor of Gdańsk, Paweł Adamowicz, launched an initiative to organize an exhibition presenting struggle for democracy in Poland and the story of the Solidarność trade union. The founding agreement in 2007 to set up the European Solidarity Centre (ESC) was signed by the representatives of the two main parties—Adamowicz for the liberal Civic Platform and Deputy Minister of Culture Jarosław Sellin for the conservative Law and Justice party— as well by Solidarność and the regional authorities. An architectural competition was launched and, in 2014, the ESC was opened in a new building on the grounds of the former Gdańsk shipyard.
In 2007, the historian Paweł Machcewicz put forward the concept for the Museum of the Second World War. He addressed the issue of the Polish-German memory conflict over forced relocations after the War. Machcewicz argued that the subject should not be discussed separately from German responsibility for unleashing the war and the numerous crimes committed in Poland by the Nazis. A proper way to deal with the past would be by establishing a museum with a grand exhibition to present the war’s complex story. The idea was approved by Prime Minister Donald Tusk and the museum, set up and financed by the Ministry of Culture, opened in Gdańsk in 2017.
Consensus and Disputes
The new museums that opened in the early 2000s were usually created with a broad political consensus. In the cases of POLIN and the ESC, the national government and opposition-controlled local governments were involved. But, in the following years, many memory institutions became the subject of heavy controversy.
In the case of the Warsaw Rising Museum, a debate started after it had opened. The major issue was that the core exhibition presented an apologetic or even enthusiastic vision of the Warsaw Rising, though the memory of the event is divisive. While there is no difference over respect for the combatants, many Poles believe that the decision to start the rising without appropriate armament or support by the Allies was imprudent, and that the museum’s exhibition should present this position too. However, politicians did not intervene in the fierce arguments. The museums’ leadership was also open to discussion and ready to invite various critical intellectuals and artists.
A dispute over the POLIN broke out in 2018 around its Estranged: March ’68 and Its Aftermath exhibition on the antisemitic campaign launched by the communist regime in 1968. In an installation devoted to the language used by the official press at the time, the curators included sentences by some right-wing journalists in current debates that contained antisemitic clichés. The controversy was also fueled by disputes between Poland and Israel at the time. The debate over the exhibition largely contributed to the decision by the minister of culture in the conservative government in 2019 not to extend Dariusz Stola’s term as director of the museum.
In case of the Museum of the Second World War, right-wing politicians alleged the project presented the German point of view on history by taking the perspective of civilian victims, which did not differentiate between culprit and victim nations. According to critics, the narrative did not include important elements of the Polish experience in the war. After the Law and Justice party won the elections in 2017, the museum’s director, Paweł Machcewicz, was dismissed.
The controversies around the ESC reflected long-lasting memory controversies over the 1980 strikes with the centre and left-wing parties defending the leading role of Lech Wałęsa in that period, while the right-wing parties counterposed to him other strike leaders, especially Anna Walentynowicz. There were also accusations of political influence by Civic Platform on the ESC. Eventually, the conservative government cut state financial support for the institution and the Solidarność trade union demanded that the ESC not use its logo, which is an important symbol of the opposition to communism.
Memory, Museums, and Politics
In his 2000 article, “The Generation of Memory: Reflections on the ‘Memory Boom’ in Contemporary Historical Studies,” the American historian Jay Winter identified crucial elements behind the expansion of the interest for history in contemporary culture. These include the influence of the Holocaust debates, the growing importance of state-organized anniversaries and celebrations, and activities related to identity politics. The affluence of Western societies after the Second World War was also an important part of the process because it created interest in the consumption of cultural goods, with memory commercialization as one response. The new historical storytelling museums that have developed in many countries since the late 1980s are also a part of that process.
All of the elements pointed out by Winter can be observed also in the museum boom in Poland. The phenomenon is connected with the Holocaust and identity debates as well as with growing affluence. But there is also a special Polish feature: settling accounts with the communist past and a response to and imitation of Western memory practices.
Memory has also become an area of political struggle in Poland and—like the media, foreign policy, and the justice system—it is now an important dividing line.Though memory was frequently used as a political tool in the first decade of this century, an elementary consensus and continuity still prevailed. The divide over memory issues grew under the conservative government in office in 2015–2023, and many hoped that things would change under the new centre-left coalition that came to power in 2023. But, unfortunately, with the dismissal of over 30 directors of museums and cultural institutions in 2024, in most cases respected professionals fired before the expiration of their contract, memory institutions look set to remain a field of political dispute for a long time.
Robert Kostro is the former director of the Polish History Museum in Warsaw. He was a guest at the IWM in 2025.
