The exhibition “Ten Polish Cities – Ten Jewish Histories” is a new permanent exhibition presented at the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow, in the Taube Family Gallery. The exhibition is based on accounts and family photographs of ten Polish Jews.

They were all born in the first decades of the 20th century and grew up or became adults in interwar Poland. They came from different cities and from different backgrounds – their families represented the entire extraordinary diversity of Polish Jewish communities before the Second World War. The world they knew fell apart in September 1939.

Six of the exhibition’s protagonists lived in Poland in the post-war years, one remained in the USSR and settled in St Petersburg, one left for Israel but eventually returned to Poland, and two emigrated permanently to the United States but retained a special relationship with Poland.

In the background of each story, visitors can see the stories of ten cities. The protagonists of the exhibition mention specific places remembered from their childhood and sometimes funny, sometimes tragic situations related to them. Seven of these towns are now located within the borders of Poland, and three are in Ukraine. This fact also reflects the extremely complex and difficult history of Central and Eastern Europe in the 20th century and, above all, adds another element to the story of the complicated fate of the people who lived in this part of the world in the 20th century.

The exhibition was prepared in cooperation with one of the Galicia Jewish Museum’s main partners, Centropa. It is based on materials collected in an extensive oral history project carried out between 2000 and 2009 in fifteen countries, involving interviews and the digitisation of family photographs and documents of approximately 1,200 elderly people.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński