The ceremony took place in the garden of a former Jewish children’s hospital in Warsaw on Tuesday, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
Leading the event was Poland's Deputy Prime Minister and Culture Minister Piotr Gliński, who had issued the decision to build the new museum, according to officials.
In attendance were Warsaw Ghetto survivor Wacław Izaak Kornblum; the Chief Rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich; and Anna Stupnicka-Bando, a Polish woman who has been granted the title of Righteous Among the Nations by Israel, among others.
In memory of Warsaw Ghetto
In his speech, Gliński said that the ceremony was taking place on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the largest Jewish revolt during World War II and the first urban uprising in German-occupied Europe.
He added: “The best way to facilitate remembrance is to create wise, friendly institutions that educate and promote dialogue and debate. Thanks to them, we can look into the future with hope.”
Gliński thanked “everyone who has contributed to the creation of the Warsaw Ghetto Museum.”
He described the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as a “tragic” event that was, nonetheless, in some ways “victorious.”
He told the gathering: “The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was designed as a means of dying a dignified death, and so of proving that a person may retain the highest level of humanity in the most tragic circumstances, in hell on Earth. And that they can oppose evil also in this way.”
Gliński said: “In this sense, it was a victorious insurrection. Because, just as Polish uprisings formed the groundwork for Polish identity, so this uprising has formed the groundwork of Israeli identity.”
Warsaw Ghetto Museum to open in 2026
Meanwhile, Albert Stankowski, director of the future Warsaw Ghetto Museum, told the audience that the institution “will open its doors in three years’ time, here at the site of the historic Bersohn and Bauman Children’s Hospital.”
His deputy Joanna Dudelewicz said that the symbolic time capsule, buried by officials under a tree that dates back to before World War II, contained the original study sketches for the design of the museum, the PAP news agency reported.
Also included was a copy of the Polish edition of The Song of the Murdered Jewish People, a book by Warsaw Ghetto Uprising participant Itzhak Katzenelson, together with a dedication from the translator, Jerzy Ficowski; recordings made for posterity by members of the museum’s council; and a memento from the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, whose fighters treated their injured colleagues at the former Jewish hospital, according to officials.
The Warsaw Ghetto Museum was established by Poland’s Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in 2018, with a mission “to disseminate knowledge about the everyday life, the survival strategies, the fight and the Holocaust of Polish Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto and other ghettos in German-occupied Poland,” the PAP news agency reported.
The Warsaw Ghetto Museum will be housed at the site of the former Bersohn and Bauman Children’s Hospital in the Polish capital, officials said.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, gov.pl, 1943.pl