On November 6, the opening of the core exhibition of the POLIN Museum was celebrated in the Einav Cultural Centre in Tel Aviv, The gathered guests – artists, politicians, journalists and representatives of the Polish communities in Israel – watched the footage of the official opening ceremony in Warsaw.

The event was enhanced by a composition prepared especially for the occasion by the Israeli composer Ella Sheriff. The lyrics were based on Wisława Szymborska’s poem Conversations with a Stone.

The honorary guest of the Gala was the Chairman of the Board of the Museum, Marian Turski. Outlining the idea of the POLIN Museum, he said: “We have built the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in order to fill - in this substitute way and at least in part - the tragic vacuum, the tragic emptiness which remained after the Jewish Nation had been annihilated in Poland. We wish to recreate the memory of what was once the largest Jewish Diaspora in the world”.

He also added that the Museum might facilitate the coming-out of Jews of Polish descent who live in Israel. “To make them feel proud of being the successors of the people who created the Jewish Diaspora in Poland, so great both in quantitative terms and in terms of spiritual strength. Therefore, I think that the Warsaw Museum may be a source of pride both in Poland and in Israel,” he said.

The evening ended with a discussion on the history of Polish Jews as depicted in the Museum. The discussion was hosted by Prof. Hanoch Gutfreund, the President of the Museum’s Friends in Israel and the former President of the Hebrew University.

The guests of the Gala included Mr. Jacek Chodorowicz, the Polish Ambassador to Israel, former Ambassador of Israel to Poland, Mr. Zvi Ravner, Mr Asaf Zamir, the Deputy Mayor of Tel Aviv, Samuel Willenberg, a former prisoner of the Treblinka extermination camp and the last surviving member of its prisoner revolt, as well as numerous representatives of the Polish communities in Israel.

The event was organised in cooperation with the Polish Embassy in Israel and the Polish Institute Tel Aviv.