International Survey of Jewish Monuments

Where the Judenrat met
by ESTHER ZANDBERG
(Haaretz 04/04/05)

Eleven international architectural firms have been selected from 119 original competitors to draw up plans for the new Museum of the History of Polish Jews.

In Warsaw last week the first phase of the international planning competition for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews was completed, and the architectural firms that will go on to compete in the final stage of the competition, which will take place in July, were announced. The idea for establishing the museum came up about 10 years ago and the structure is to be built in the area of the former Warsaw Ghetto, at the site where the building of the Judenrat headquarters stood, near Anielewicz Street and opposite the memorial for the uprising by sculptor Natan Rappaport. Construction is slated to begin next year and to be completed in 2008. Without a doubt this is one of the most fraught and sensitive of construction sites - also in the context of the crowded and competitive arena of Jewish museums around the world today.

Applying to participate in the planning competition, which was announced by the initiator of the museum - a Polish body called the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland - were 119 architectural firms from 36 countries, among them Poland, which sent the largest number of proposals, the United States, Germany and Holland. From Israel, 15 firms applied; this was a relatively large number, but predictable considering the nature of the project. Eleven firms have moved on to the second stage, among them Daniel Libeskind, Peter Eisenman and Zvi Hecker (an Israeli architect who works in Germany).

In retrospect, it is hard to imagine a competition for the planning of a Jewish museum in Poland without the latter three architects. All have been identified during recent decades with planning Jewish institutions in the Diaspora, and with memorial and commemorative architecture. Eisenman is the planner of the Berlin memorial dedicated to the Jews of Europe who were murdered in the Holocaust, and which will be dedicated this coming May on the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. Libeskind, the architect of the Ground Zero site in New York, has planned a series of Jewish museums, first and foremost the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Hecker has planned the Jewish school in Berlin and the Jewish Cultural Center in the city of Duisberg, Germany.

Valuable advice
In the first stage of the competition only the professional profile of the competitors was examined, and not plans or specific ideas. For the second and final stage, each of the 11 firms will formulate detailed designs and a winner will be chosen. Heading the international jury is architect Bohdan Paczowsky of Luxembourg. Among its members are architectural historian Prof. Joseph Rykwert, the editor of the French architecture monthly L'architecture d'aujourd'hui Axel Souva and architect Zvi Efrat from Jerusalem's Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design.

Another member of the team of judges is historian Prof. Jerzy Halbersztadt from the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland, who is the project director of the new museum. In the past Halberstadt served as a senior researcher at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and is today the curator of the historical museum that opened last year at the site of the Bergen concentration camp.

The competition for planning the new museum was funded by contributions from private donors in the U.S., Poland, France and Belgium. Initially architect Frank Gehry was chosen to design the structure; he announced that he would work voluntarily and would ask only that his expenses be covered. However, later on his name was dropped from the project. Halbersztadt said this week that "the institute did not reach full agreement with Gehry on organizational, financial and content issues." According to him, Gehry refused the invitation to participate in the international planning competition, but "over the years, he has provided us with advice worth its weight in gold and I will always be grateful for his contribution to formulation of the identity of the museum, one of the most challenging projects in the world."

The idea of establishing a Jewish museum in Poland was first suggested by the late Jeshajahu Weinberg, a very active figure in the field of commemorative facilities and one of the founders of the Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv and the Holocaust Museum in Washington, of which he was the first director. Weinberg enlisted Halbersztadt, who with other activists at the historical institute, convinced influential individuals around the world of its necessity and legitimacy, and began to raise donations for its establishment. Among the public figures who have been recruited for the idea is also Vice Premier Shimon Peres, who for several years now has been a member of the honorary board of trustees of the new facility.

The contributions that were gathered helped in the initial research and in collection of documents, which thus far number 60,000. Gradually the political establishment in Poland also got involved in the initiative. Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski committed himself to supporting it and the Warsaw municipality donated the land for construction.

A special agreement that was signed on January 25 of this year between the government of Poland and the city of Warsaw and the institute dispelled many doubts that had remained concerning the establishment of the museum. The tripartite agreement formalizes the status of the museum and ensures that 80 percent of the costs of construction and 97 percent of the cost of the upkeep will be covered. The overall cost of the museum is estimated at $55 million - a respectable sum, but modest in comparison to the value of the assets of Polish Jewry on the eve of the war (which has been estimated at $30 billion, according to a report that was commissioned by the government of Israel and was published recently). The historical institute will raise its part in the funding of the establishment of the museum from private donations. According to Halbersztadt, the agreement that was signed has helped to attract fundraisers.

A difficult mission
The museum will be built in the only place in the area of the Warsaw Ghetto that has not experienced any new construction. Its floor space will be about 13,000 square meters and it will include a hall for a permanent and changing exhibition using interactive means and multimedia, an education center, an auditorium, a parking lot and a restaurant. Surrounding the museum there will be an open park. The exhibition will be "thematic" and as noted at the project's Internet site, it will show the 1,000 years of Jewish history in Poland - dating back to the beginnings of the Jewish presence there, through the "Golden Age" in the 16th and 17th centuries, on to the period of the war and the Holocaust, to the "new blossoming" of the Jewish community in the 1990s. It will also show "the role of the Polish Jews in the creation of the State of Israel."

The historical and curatorial concept of the museum, whereby the Holocaust is just one chapter in the history of Polish Jewry - though a "tragic, terrible and incomprehensible chapter" - has stirred quite a bit of opposition and the concern has been raised that it will dwarf the memory of the Holocaust and aid in the "cleansing of the consciences" of the Poles. The initiators of the project believe, however, that "the presentation of 1,000 years of Jewish history in Poland will aid in the understanding of the dimensions of the tragedy of the Holocaust."

Everyone connected to the establishment of the museum is taking care to stress that this is not a Holocaust museum as such, and that "we cannot allow even the most dramatic moment in the history, the Holocaust, to deny the presence of the Jewish community in Poland," in the words of one Polish minister. He added that "this is a difficult mission to achieve, very difficult."

And indeed, the experience of the Jewish Museum in Berlin has shown that even though its initiators stressed that it is only a historical museum, it is perceived in the mind of the public as a Holocaust museum in every respect. There is no doubt that the architectural design - the museum in Berlin is shaped like a broken Star of David - and the rhetoric surrounding it, which sometimes gets out of control, has played a considerable part in how it has been labeled.