After 37 years, Janusz Makuch is stepping down as director of the Krakow Jewish Culture Festival. Taking over will be his longtime deputy, Robert Gądek.
“Thirty-seven years after the creation of the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow, I have decided to stand down as the Director of the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow,” Makuch said in a letter posted on the Festival’s web site. “For me, this is a natural course of events, given that the purpose of the Festival lies in its continuity and constant development.”
Makuch will remain with the Jewish Culture Festival as the Honorary Chairman of the JCF Association and the Curator of the Festival Program.
Robert Gądek joined the Jewish Culture Festival in 2005, after serving as the Director of another Krakow institution, the Center for Jewish Culture.
The Festival was co-founded by Makuch and another young, non-Jewish Polish intellectual, Krzysztof Gierat, in 1988, when Poland was still under communist rule.
Born in the town of Pulawy in 1960, Makuch was drawn to Jewish culture, history, and heritage when he was a teenager, and he has frequently referred to himself – a gentile immersed in promoting Jewish culture and heritage – as a Shabbos Goy.
The Festival takes place in Krakow’s old Jewish quarter, Kazimierz. In 1988, Kazimierz was a derelict slum, but it encompassed Central Europe’s most important complex of Jewish historical monuments — historic synagogues, prayer houses, and two Jewish cemeteries, plus shops, apartment blocks and other original buildings set amid a welter of cobbled streets, marketplaces and courtyards.
Today, in part due to the influence of the Festival, Kazimierz is a major center of tourism and education, much of it based on its Jewish character.
The Festival was established in large part to pay homage to the Jewish world that was destroyed in the Holocaust and to restore the memory of that heritage and history.
“With Poland’s return to democracy and independence in 1989, people began to explore previously forbidden aspects of history, including Jewish culture.,” Gądek told an interviewer in 2017. “The festival took on the mission of reintroducing Jewish culture to Polish mainstream society and emphasizing that Jews were not confined to ghettos but played a vital role in shaping the country’s development. This was the initial mission.
As Poland has become more educated and resources have become more available, the festival has evolved. We’ve moved from simply reminding people of the Jewish past to presenting contemporary Jewish culture. This sets our festival apart because we don’t focus on the past or reiterate stereotypes; instead, we create a space for encounters with contemporary Jewish life and culture, with the hope of fostering a better attitude toward Jews in Poland.
The Festival grew rapidly after the fall of communism into what is probably the bestknown and biggest Jewish culture festival in Europe, known for its many concerts, workshops, lectures, and exhibitions, culminating with an hours-long open-air concert called Shalom on Szeroka that — before the impact of Covid-19 — drew thousands of spectators.
This year (2025) the Israel-Iran conflict and closure of Israel’s airspace (preventing invited guests from Israel from traveling to Krakow) forced the cancellation of the outdoor concert and nine other events.
Jewish Culture Festival web site