Kraków Jewish Museum "Galicja"

Section 1

The title of section 1 is "Jewish life in ruins". Thanks to this exhibition we have understood that about 90% of Poland's 3.3 milion Jewish society were forced out of their homes and murdered during the Holocaust. Because of that their lifes were left in ruins.

There were hundreds of flourishing Jewish communities in Galicia, often with a history going back centuries. Their synagogues witnessed weddings and joyful song; the cemetries contained carefully carved tombstones. But now there aren't any people to look after these places, which are left to rot. Lots of synagogues and cementeries are nowadays destroyed and there are only ruins left very often they are overgrown with plants and unnoticed by people. The gravestones have been smashed to pieces and abandoned. The banality of the ruins they left behind is painful to look at.

From Poland's history we know that after Holocaust during the 40 years of post-war communist rule in Poland ruins connected with Jews' identity were simply left to decay and sometimes destroyed to be replaced by new buildings.
 However, following the transition to democratic goverment in 1989 new possibilities slowly began to emerge. As a result of a new local sense of civic pride and an interest in the multicultural past, have sometimes encouraged restoration projects as an alternative to demolition.

In conclusion we have learnt that even if the realities have changed Jewish life in hundreds of places in Galicia simply ceased to exist. The ruins clearly demonstrate what such places physically looked like until very recently.

Section 2

The second part focuses on early Jewish culture, in stark contrast to what we just saw in the first part surprisingly. Some things were spared during the German occupation, so many signs of the strength and even splendor of traditional Jewish culture can be found in the remains of Galician villages and towns that still exist today. The art and architecture of Galician synagogues was heavily influenced by mystical thought, encouraging rich decorative elements both inside and out. The synagogue art that flourishes here is almost impossible to find in the US, Israel, UK or other countries where Jews of Polish descent live today, which is another reason why the surviving traces of Jewish heritage here are still written in Polish. Galicia is particularly valuable. Tombstones are just as important. Many have fine writing, pictorial carvings and impressive literary quality. The tombs of many of the founders of the Hasidic devotional movement can still be found here, often visited by pilgrims, alongside simple memorials to poor rural Jews. Tombstones depict the entire society: scholars and merchants, artisans and soldiers, as well as community leaders and ordinary men and women. If one figure from this rich history had to be singled out to illustrate the influence of the culture developed here on the Jewish world, it would be Rema, the 16th-century rabbinic scholar known for the Rema Synagogue in Cracow. Rema did such a good job of codifying Jewish law that Orthodox Jews of European and German descent around the world still regard it as an important foundation of the entire Jewish legal and cultural system. Thanks to him, the city of Cracow became an extremely important center of Jewish learning. Jewish culture, art, scholarship, leadership, mysticism and political thought: traces of all this and more can still be seen today in Galicia, Poland.

Section 3

Section 4

In the section 4 we saw an exhibition which shows how the past is being remembered. 

Holocaust commemoration was hard to develop after a war caused by communistic government was marginalising Jewish suffering as something distinct from the suffering of Poles. But luckily as early as 1947 was established the museum of Auschwitz. We got to know that to commemorate the Holocaust there are different events such as church ceremonies, local youth meetings with survivors etc.

Section 5

In 5th section we learnt about the revival of Jewish Life.  First of all in the 1970s of the 20th century Jewish life was significantly restricted.
At the mass graves near Zbylitowska Góra, a ceremonial helds every year to commemorate the mass extermination of Tarnów Jews in June 1942. 
And everybody knows the Jewish Culture Festival is the most important event of its kind in Europe is a symbol of the return of the Jewish world to Krakow.
There are also: March of Remembrance on the streets of Krakow (commemorates the liquidation of the ghetto in 1943) and the "March of the Living in Auschwitz."
An important element of the revival are the Hasidic pilgrimages too.
Judaic studies at university became popular and reached high level though.
Jewish heritage appeared in museums and other institutions after 1989, then lived to be publicly recognized.
Jewish heritage sites are protected by local activists.
To this day, Kazimierz (Krakow's quarter) is filled with groups of Jewish tourists all year round, including Holocaust survivors and their descendants.
Actually we saw a lot of people there. 

Section 6

In Section 6 we had an opportunity to learn about 10 Jewish biographies. Each of them was a completely different story that shows the reality of Jewish life in the 20th century. The exhibition was talking about the personal experiences of these people and showing their photographs. It says about how they grew up in Poland, tried to survive the war times and put their lives together after the war. We found these stories extremely interesting. They showed what difficulties Jews faced during those times. The people of the biographies had to hide, even flee to the USSR. They were deported to labor camps or ghettos. They experienced traumas and losses of loved ones. Some of them managed to survive the German invasions, while others were forced to fight in the Warsaw Uprising. Through these stories, we learned more about the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust. All 10 biographies can be listened to as an audiobook on the Centropa app 

In the museum we expanded our knowledge and learned a lot of interesting information, then we went to a walk around Krakow.

We saw the Old Synagogue, probably built in the second half of the 15th century by Czech Jews. 

Then we went to the New Square, in the middle of the square is the ,,okrąglak" . It is a monumental commercial pavilion built in 1900, consisting of two structures: an inner hall and a ring around it. 

We also had the opportunity to see the Tempel Synagogue (Progressive Synagogue), an incredibly impressive building. It is a developing center of Jewish culture, which hosts concerts due to its good accoustics and the size of its meetings, especially during the Jewish Culture Festival. 

We saw a tenement with a mezuzah, it is a parchment with an inscribed passage from Deuteronomy (verses 6, 4-9, 11 and 13-21), it is placed in a flat, decorative case. It was hung by Jewish believers on the outer right-hand door frame.
When passing through the front door, the mezuzah was touched with devotion. A prayer is said as one enters and exits the house.