• Would you like to get acquainted with our collection of museum and archival objects? Go to the Collections portal and to wmuzeach.pl!
   
• Are you interested in the history of cities in Central and Eastern Europe and the fate of their Jewish communities? Are you looking for information about your city and its monuments? Are you looking for biographies of well-known and lesser-known figures in the Jewish community? Check out our Virtual Shtetl knowledge portal!
   
• Are you curious about other people and their personal stories? Are you fascinated with social history? You can find full interviews and interview excerpts from our oral history collection on our YouTube channel!
   
• If you would like to browse through our collection of interviews and learn about its various aspects, check out the written summaries tab of our interviews Oral History.
   
• Are you looking for reliable knowledge about the attitude of Poles towards the Holocaust and Polish-Jewish relations during the German occupation (1939-1945)? Are you looking for information about the Polish Righteous Among the Nations? Would you like to get to know their stories and the fate of the Jews in hiding? Check out the Polish Righteous portal.

Everyone is invited to use our collection and knowledge platforms - enthusiasts, local activists, teachers, students and their parents, tour guides and researchers. Experts and beginners who are just starting to be interested in the history and culture of Polish Jews. Individuals of all ages.

Find out more about our portals!

The Virtual Shtetl is an internet portal documenting the history of Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe, which is visited by one million users from all over the world annually. It has been operating since 2009 and is available in four language versions: Polish, English, Hebrew and German.

The portal gathers information on more than 1,900 cities and towns located within the historical borders of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the former Russian "settlement zone", i.e. on the territories of present-day Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Latvia and Russia. We present the history of a given Jewish community from the first settlement to the Holocaust, and in the case of large cities - to the present day. In addition to the stories from the Jewish community, we present rich iconography (over 30,000 items), slogans and biographical essays (over 3,200), over 1,700 dictionary entries and encyclopaedic studies on Jewish social life: religion, tradition, education, economy, culture.

The portal also includes studies and data on Jewish cemeteries, oral history interview studies and a genealogical database. On an ongoing basis, we publish databases rich in statistical information and new photographic documentation of Jewish monuments (synagogues, cemeteries) and memorial sites.

Before the Second World War, in the clusters of houses, shops, schools and synagogues with the mark of a mezuzah one could hear Yiddish dialect during a busy week, which quietened down on Friday evening as the community began celebrating the Sabbath. By running the Virtual Shtetl, we want to pay tribute to the thousands of Jewish towns and cities in the lands of the former Republic of Poland.

• www.sztetl.org.pl/en, portal editors contact: [email protected]

On the Polish Righteous portal, we document and disseminate the stories of Polish men and women who, at the risk of their own lives, selflessly helped Jews during the Second World War. In this way, we commemorate the rescuers – above all the Righteous Among the Nations – as well as the survivors and the victims of the Holocaust.

We present these stories of aid against the broader historical background of occupied Poland (1939–1945), where Jews were condemned by Nazi Germany to total extermination and providing them with help was severely punished, even by death. We show that Polish attitudes toward the Holocaust were diverse and complex and that assistance to Jews was an exceptional phenomenon.

On the portal, you will find a collection of over 1,000 stories of aid, a collection that we continually expand and update. These texts are carefully prepared by Holocaust researchers and are based on historical sources. They include oral history interviews, archival and contemporary photographs as well as personal and historical memorabilia from the collection of POLIN Museum.

Complementing these rescue stories are historical studies in which we present selected issues in an accessible way, in light of the latest scholarly research. The topics we discuss include the motivations of those who provided help; the risk of the death penalty and other dangers associated with aiding Jews; the experience of Jews in hiding and the phenomenon of mutual aid on the "Aryan side"; the activities of the "Żegota" Council to Aid Jews; the shaping of the memory of the Righteous; and narratives in public discourse about rescuing Jews.

For teachers, we provide educational materials from POLIN Museum, including lesson plans, films, and interviews with experts on the Righteous Among the Nations, such as Irena Sendler and her co-workers as well as Jan and Antonina Żabiński.
The portal was created as part of the "Polish Righteous – Recalling Forgotten History" project, which was launched in 2007 under the honorary patronage of the President of the Republic of Poland. The portal is available in two language versions – Polish and English. Its content can be searched by, among other criteria, names; places where aid was provided; historical themes; and keywords. We also encourage you to follow the Polish Righteous Page on Facebook.

"Whoever saves a single life saves the world entire" – reads the sentence from the Talmud, which is inscribed on the medal awarded to the Righteous Among the Nations. We believe that in the face of contemporary wars and conflicts, the stories of these extraordinary individuals – their courage, empathy and selfless sacrifice, as well as the heroic will of Jews to survive during the Holocaust – can serve today as an inspiration for actions in support of human rights, dialogue and the search for what unites rather than divides.

• www.righteous.pl, please send any questions using the e-mail address: [email protected]

This portal brings together the Jewish heritage objects kept in several dozen museums all across Poland. It provides access to a plethora of sources and interpretations of various aspects of Polish-Jewish history, including narratives about individuals, among others Bogdan Wojdowski and Samuel Zura, events (like the Goldhar family archive on March ‘68), and places (e.g. the account of Jaśmina Wójcik). The portal also offers an opportunity to explore works of art—both the iconic ones, like the oeuvre of Wilhelm Sasnal, and the less-known ones by artists such as Olga Siemaszko, Krystiana Robb-Narbutt, or Richard Bilan. We invite you to get acquainted with the collections using themes interpreted by the POLIN Museum curatorial team. That way you will see Jewish culture and art as well as the selected artefacts in new contexts, and learn about the links between them.

The portal is part of the "Collections on Wheels" project, which we have been implementing since 2020 together with thirty cultural institutions in Poland. Our joint goal and achievement is digitizing, processing, and sharing the digital documentation of over 7,500 unique material objects from the Jewish heritage. Here is a list of fifteen partner museums presenting Jewish heritage from their collections in the first stage of the project. Should you wish to join us and present the Jewish collections kept at your institution, please click here. In 2025 we shared the collections of all thirty partner institutions.

• www.kolekcje.polin.pl/en, contact: [email protected]

Selected items in the POLIN Museum, developed and digitised, can be viewed via the website www.inmuseums.pl On the portal, we present thematic narratives, composed of various objects from the collection.

For art lovers, we recommend a story about artists such as Teodor Bok or Marek Szwarc. Those interested in the family stories of Polish Jews may want to check the stories about the Kramsztyk, Najder and Resz families or Zajczyk and Hochsinger families.

For educators, we have prepared more than a dozen richly illustrated and described educational paths.

The portal, launched in 2022, includes the digital resources of five museums managed or co-managed by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage: the Museum of King Jan III's Palace at Wilanów (project leader), the POLIN Museum, the National Museum in Lublin, the National Museum in Szczecin and the Łańcut Castle Museum. The project was co-financed under the Digital Poland Operational Programme (Measure 2.3 Digital availability and usability of public sector information. Sub-measure 2.3.2 Digital availability of cultural resources).

• www.inmuseums.pl