The year 2022 has marked the 10th anniversary of Jewish Heritage Europe. The theme of our birthday celebrations has been the “Anniversary of Anniversaries” — that is, using JHE’s own anniversary to feature other significant or symbolic anniversaries.
We couldn’t let the year go by without highlighting the major anniversaries of two important institutions in Poland — the 20th anniversary of the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage (FODZ) and the 75th anniversary of the Jewish Historical Institute (ZIH). Mazel tov!
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FOUNDATION FOR THE PRESERVATION OF JEWISH HERITAGE IN POLAND (FODŻ)
FODŻ, overall the most significant player in Jewish built heritage preservation in Poland, was established in 2002 by the Union of Jewish Communities in Poland and the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO).
Its charge is to reclaim pre-World War II Jewish communal properties following the 1997 law governing the relationship between the Polish state and the Union of Jewish Religious Communities (including communal property restitution), to provide legal services for such restitution, and to
– manage restituted properties;
– protect properties bearing special religious or historical significance.
– construct and install monuments and memorial plaques to commemorate a site or event
FODŻ operates in the parts Poland where there are no Jewish religious communities that can care for Jewish heritage sites or “where distance from major urban centers or lack of sufficient financial resources makes it difficult for existing small Jewish communities to provide adequate long-term care and maintenance” — that means, in geographic terms, nearly two-thirds of Poland’s territory.
It describes its mission today as “undertaking actions aimed at restoration and commemoration of the physical remnants of Poland’s vibrant prewar Jewish life.” It carries out educational programs as well as preservation, restoration, and commemorative projects, and traced a Chassidic Route tourism and educational itinerary.
It recently launched a web site with detailed Virtual Tours of several synagogues and other heritage sites around the country.
Jewish cemeteries have been a key focus. FODŻ has carried out cleaning, renovation, and fencing work in more than 200 Jewish cemeteries. Holocaust memorials have been dedicated in some of these places.
All FODZ projects, it states, “whether cleaning, fencing, renovating, or memorializing a site through the installation of plaques, markers, or monuments, are carried out with supervision of the Chief Rabbi of Poland and the Rabbinical Commission.”
FODZ works with a number of partners and funding sources, and cooperates in its work with local authorities and NGOs.
It is now a partner in the Coalition of Guardians of Jewish Cemeteries project, aimed at linking volunteers and others around the country who are engaged in protecting and maintaining Poland’s more than 1,200 Jewish cemeteries.
Preservation projects have included the revitalization of the Renaissance synagogue in Zamość, now used as a cultural space — its largest and most significant project completed to-date — and the ongoing or planned restoration of the two synagogues in Kraśnik and the synagogue in Przysucha.
Today, the Foundation noted to JHE, after 20 years since its establishment, FODZ “is currently seeking new ways and partnerships to continue its activities.” It said that:
Guided by this intention, the Foundation has in recent months established fruitful cooperation in the field of protection of Jewish cemeteries in Poland with the National Institute for the Conservation of Monuments, a newly established state cultural institution, subordinate to the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in Warsaw. FODZ also hopes to receive further support from the descendants of former Polish Jewish communities.
Click for FODZ’s 20th Anniversary publication
Click for the FODZ Virtual Tours of synagogues
JEWISH HISTORICAL INSTITUTE (Żydowski Instytut Historyczny) — JHI or ŻIH
The Institute is, as per its web site, the “longest-functioning Jewish scientific institution in Poland” and the major repository of Jewish archives, documentation, art, objects, and other material regarding Polish Jewry, including the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto – the Ringelblum Archive — collected by the clandestine Oneg Shabbat group and buried in milk cans before the destruction of the Ghetto.
It serves as a museum, educational center, and archive, as well as a research institute. Since 2009 it has been officially known as the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute.
The ZIH, at Tłomackie 3/5, occupies one of the very few Jewish buildings that survived the destruction of World War II — the pre-war Main Judaic Library, designed by Edward Zacharias Eber and built in 1928-36 next to the Great Synagogue at Tłomackie Street.
The library stood within the WW2 Warsaw Ghetto; in May 1943 the Nazis blew up the Great Synagogue and torched the Library.
The Institute was officially established on October 1, 1947 — it was an institutional transformation of what was called Central Jewish Historical Commission, a body set up in Lublin 1944 by the Central Committee of the Polish Jews, to “collect accounts of Holocaust survivors and to make available proof material useful in prosecuting German war criminals.”
In 1946, the Commission had collected already over 8,000 cases of archives, several dozen diaries, memoirs and works of literature, about 2,000 personal accounts, a few thousand books found in ghetto ruins, over 3,000 photographs, 250 paintings, sculptures and synagogalia.
It has been administered as a state-run institution, under the Culture Ministry, since 1994.
It has permanent exhibitions, including its main core exhibition on the Ringelblum Archive and the Oneg Shabbat group that assembled it, called What we’ve been unable to shout out to the world, and an exhibition on the synagogue, as well as changing temporary exhibits.
The Institute has an extensive research library and archive, and a genealogy center, and it publishes books as well as a bulletin, the Jewish History Quarterly.
In honor of the Institute’s 75th anniversary, the Institute, along with the Yale University Fortunoff Archive and the Yeshiva University Emil A. and Jenny Fish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, hosted in May a three-day international conference called Bridging Divides: Rupture and Continuity in Polish Jewish History.
You can watch the entire conference on the Institute’s YouTube channel — see the opening session here: