As the recent mass shooting in the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh made evident, anti-Semitism is on the rise in the United States. It’s also increasing around the world, in places like Europe and countries where hard-right nationalist governments have come to power. That’s especially true in countries such as Hungary and Poland.
The key mission of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw is to tell the story of Poland through the history of its Jewish population. Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimblett is the museum's chief curator and is also a professor emerita at New York University.
“The POLIN Museum ... has the courage, the boldness, the vision, to offer an open history and one that creates a space for critical reflection and debate," she says.
Kirschenblatt-Gimblett recently gave the Stahl Center Distinguished Lecture at UW-Milwaukee and she joined Lake Effect's Bonnie North in the studio then to explain what’s happening in Poland that she believes makes museums so important:
