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Last update - 20:08 26/06/2007 Landmark Jewish-Polish museum to open in central Warsaw By The Associated Press Poland's president and Jewish leaders broke ground Tuesday for a landmark museum that will celebrate the history of Jewish life in Poland that flourished for 1,000 years before it was destroyed in the Holocaust. President Lech Kaczynski told the crowd, gathered under a white tent under a steady rain and stiff wind, that "the Museum of the History of Polish Jews is a great chance to... break the lack of knowledge about one another and forge deeper reconciliation between Jewish and non-Jewish Poles as they remember their common history." Advertisement The $65 million museum is to rise in a central Warsaw square, next to a stark monument to the Jews who resisted the Nazis during the 1943 ghetto uprising, and down the street from the rail siding were many Jews were deported to death camps. "In this city, in this place, which was once home to a large Jewish community, the largest Jewish city in Europe, this museum will fulfill its role - (to show) that for 900 years our histories were entwined," Kaczynski said. "There were various periods, better times and worse times, but there's no doubt that the history of Polish Jews is a part of the history of my country ... and demands remembrance." Kaczynski and other officials, including Israeli Ambassador David Peleg, Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv Meir Lau and Warsaw mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz signed the groundbreaking act. The leaders then used a trowel and mortar to bury the documents in the red-brick foundations of an 18th century building that was used by the Judenrat, or head of the Jewish administration in the ghetto during World War II. The museum - an austere glass and limestone structure designed by Finnish architects Rainer Mahlamaki and Ilmari Lahdelma - is to be opened in two years' time. Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv Meir Lau, whose parents hail from Poland, stressed the museum's importance in conveying the rich contribution of Poland's Jews for those too young to remember. "Their story will be told for future generations, not only how millions of Jews perished in the Holocaust, but the story of (who) were those Jews, what did they accomplish, what did they create, who were these personalities," Lau said. These Jews had a glorious past. He invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has denied the Holocaust, to visit the museum, which is scheduled to open in late 2009. "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is invited to come here to see the millions of Polish Jews and to know also how they perished from this world so he will understand the Holocaust is a real thing, is not a legend," Lau said. "You cannot deny history, you cannot deny facts, and the facts and the history of Polish Jews will be shown, expressed and represented here in this museum." Officials hope the museum will become a cultural landmark to match Jerusalem's Yad Vashem, the United States' Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington and Berlin's Jewish Museum. To many, such a center is long overdue in a country that had Europe's largest Jewish community until World War II, numbering about 3.3 million, or 10 percent of the total population. The society produced a vibrant Yiddish-speaking culture and a string of great scientists, writers and thinkers, including Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer. Poland is also where Nazi Germany built Auschwitz, Treblinka and the other extermination camps where 6 million Jews - half of them Polish - were killed. Yet Jewish history and suffering were taboo themes for decades under communist rule, which collapsed in 1989. Only about 30,000 Jews live in Poland today. Museum creators say the project will chronicle the fate of Jews in their Eastern European homeland with interactive and multimedia displays and video - not just traditional artifacts and exhibits - in order to give visitors a deeper sense of what was lost. Plans, for example, include reconstructing the painted ceiling of an 18th century wooden synagogue almost to its original size. Eight galleries will narrate a story starting in the 10th century when Ibrahim ibn Jakub, a Jewish merchant from Arab Spain, first arrived in the Polish kingdom Bookmark to del.icio.us   Carter's contacts Report: Ex-U.S. president Carter to meet with Hamas leader in Syria. Warning shouts Officer: Palestinians warned Israelis of terrorist infiltration.   1.   "...will celebrate the history of Jewish life in Poland ..." 20:49  |  survivor`s son 26/06/07   2.   Does the name Chaim Rumkowski ring a bell? 21:14  |  Jozef 26/06/07   3.   Jewish Museum in Warsaw 21:46  |  JEHUDA EVRON 26/06/07   4.   Survivors/Collaborators 21:56  |  Mike 26/06/07   5.   Great news 23:57  |  Justine 26/06/07   6.   Question 00:10  |  j. bollman 16/07/07   7.   to #3 01:00  |  Jerzy 10/04/08

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