Zygmunt Stępiński will continue to serve as POLIN Museum's Director
The Ministry of Culture and National Heritage has extended the term of director Zygmunt Stępinski. Zygmunt Stępiński will manage Museum for the next three years. The director issued a statement, which can be read below.
Yesterday at the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, I received a nomination for the next three years of managing POLIN Museum.
“It is not often that a museum makes history as well as chronicles it,”
– Dr Arnie Eisen, Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, commented on our Museum’s grand opening. That is precisely how I think of POLIN Museum and of my running this unique institution.
The Museum’s mission statement reads:
"The Museum’s mission statement reads: the dramatic history of Polish Jews serves as a point of departure of sorts to talk about the challenges of today’s world. It is a living history, relevant to both the present and the future. We believe that getting acquainted with it may help develop empathy and respect for people of different religions and cultures. We would like as many visitors and participants in our programs as possible to discover a deeper and unvarnished notion of Polish-Jewish relations.”
This is the strategy I am going to pursue together with the POLIN Museum team in the coming years.
I wish to thank for the trust bestowed upon me by the Museum’s organisers: Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the City of Warsaw, the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland, and by the Museum staff.
Zygmunt Stępiński
Director of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews
Zygmunt Stępiński graduated from the Department of History at the University of Warsaw. He has been engaged in social activities of Jewish organizations in Poland and abroad for years. In the 1980s he was active in the democratic opposition. He was a publisher and journalist, co-founder of the MURATOR Publishing Company and long-term chairman of its board, co-author of communal programs: "Affordable home” and “Home with no barriers.”
In the years 2012-2019, as Deputy Director of POLIN Museum, Mr Stępiński supervised the operation of the departments of education, communications, as well as sales and marketing. He has a fair share in the Museum’s record-breaking attendance and in the remarkable success of its program.
Since February 2019 Mr Stępiński was Acting Director of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. He was nominated as the Museum Director on 1 March 2020.
