POLIN Museum recalls the Jews imprisoned in the ghettoes across occupied Poland

The core exhibition at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews has been enriched with a new installation. It presents the stories of Jewish residents of several Polish towns who at the time of the Second World War were imprisoned in the ghettoes.

Warsaw ghetto is the most widely-known, yet the Germans established six hundred sealed-off quarters for the Jewish minority, among others in Lwów, Łódź, Przemyśl, Radom, Rzeszów and Tarnów. The first ghetto was established eighty-one years ago, on 8 October 1939.

The new section of the POLIN core exhibition, located on the mezzanine level of the Holocaust Gallery, commemorates the ghettoes scattered across Poland and the people imprisoned in them. The display includes personal keepsakes which document the life inside the ghettoes: letters, diaries, graphic art and drawings. Their authors share the traumatic experience of isolation, longing, fear for their own life and for the life of their near and dear ones.

The archival documents exude suffering caused by prolonged starvation, concern about the future and the sense of impending death. All these emotions are present in the notes and drawings held in the collections of POLIN Museum and the Jewish Historical Institute. The objects on display will be rotated so that our visitors can get acquainted with as many artefacts as possible. 

Project realized thanks to the support of the Koret Foundation and the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland