Polish Jewry museum named European Museum of the Year

WARSAW, Poland — POLIN: Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw has won the European Museum of the Year Award for 2016.

The winner was announced during a ceremony on Saturday in San Sebastian, Spain.

The Museum of the History of Polish Jews, formally founded in 2005 by the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland, the City of Warsaw and the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, opened its doors to the public in April 2013. The Core Exhibition, presenting the thousand-year history of Polish Jews, has been opened since October 2014.

“The long-shared history between Jewish people and other people of this region of the world is one of a continuously negotiated co-existence through conflict as well as cooperation, integration and assimilation. For very large and very diverse audiences the POLIN now serves as an absorbing place to confront and examine the perpetually relevant questions of how a co-existence, however fraught, can suddenly transfigure into an absolute rupture, into the near eradication of a whole population and destruction of a culture,” the European Museum Forum said in conferring the award.

The European Museum of the Year Award is organized by the European Museum Forum. This year’s ceremony, the 39th, was attended by over 200 people from 29 European countries.

The POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, Poland, August 12, 2015. (AP/Czarek Sokolowski)