The Galicia Jewish Museum (Polish: Żydowskie Muzeum Galicja) is located in the historical Jewish district Kazimierz in Kraków, Poland. It focuses on the traces of Jewish life and culture that can still be found in the area of the historic Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia located in modern Poland.
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The Museum was established in April 2004 by British photojournalist Chris Schwarz as an effort to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust and celebrate the Jewish culture of Polish Galicia.
Following Schwarz' early death in 2007, Kate Craddy became the director of the Museum.[1] She was followed by Jakub Nowakowski in 2010.[2] Both English and Polish have remained the Museum's main operating languages. Today the Museum welcomes 30,000 visitors annually from around the world.[3]
The main exhibition of the Museum, Traces of Memory, is the result of a twelve-year collaboration between photographer and museum founder Chris Schwarz and British scholar Jonathan Webber. It commemorates the 800-year Jewish presence in western Galicia (today's southeastern Poland) through contemporary photographs of synagogues, cemeteries and other relics of the Jewish presence in the region still visible today. The exhibition is divided into five sections, representing different ways of approaching the Jewish past in Polish Galicia: Jewish Life in Ruins, Jewish Culture as it Once Was, The Holocaust: Sites of Massacre and Destruction, How the Past is Being Remembered and People Making Memory Today. A part of the exhibition is dedicated to Auschwitz concentration camp.
In 2008, the Museum collaborated with the Auschwitz Jewish Center to create the exhibition Polish Heroes, which focuses on the Polish Righteous Among the Nations. Today, the exhibition can be seen in six museums across Poland, England and the United States.
The Museum also hosts two to three temporary exhibitions. At the moment, the Museum is hosting a temporary exhibition on Jewish life in Lviv during the interwar period and the Second World War which features the memories and photographs of Holocaust survivors from the city.
The Museum provides opportunities for groups to meet with local recipients of the Righteous Among the Nations Award as well as Holocaust and concentration camp survivors.
In addition to tours and meetings, the Museum's Education Center offers workshops, lectures, and seminars on Jewish religion and culture and the Holocaust for different age groups. It is one of the only providers in southern Poland to offer Holocaust education classes on a permanent basis for visiting schools.[4]
The Museum regularly hosts klezmer concerts and other cultural events.
In 2010, the Museum became an official partner of the Austrian Service Abroad.