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 POLIN, which opened its main exhibition in 2014, is one of the
largest Jewish museums in the world and has been the subject of
a squabble between the government and the museum's former
director, Dariusz Stola, over everything from the use of grant
funding, to exhibitions and conferences at the museum.
The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party says it is reframing
Polish history in museums to portray the country's victimhood
and heroism more fairly.
In particular, it seeks to persuade Western audiences that Poles
overwhelmingly helped Jews during the Holocaust, despite a
growing body of research showing thousands had killed or
denounced their Jewish neighbors hiding from the Nazi Germans
during World War Two.
Zygmunt Stepinski, previously acting director of the museum and
before that its deputy head, will take over as director.
"It's a bittersweet solution," said Piotr Wislicki, head of the
Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland, which
runs the museum with the culture ministry and the city of
Warsaw.
Wislicki said some private donors had suspended funding during
the row over the continuation of Stola's directorship.
"We lost Stola, who was the best ambassador of the Polish-Jewish
dialogue in the world," he told Reuters. "However, the museum
remains independent."
The culture ministry was at times unhappy with the way Stola ran
the museum.
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An exhibition about a 1968 anti-Jewish campaign orchestrated by the
ruling communists that pushed Jews out of their jobs and drove many
out from Poland, for example, was particularly unpopular with PiS.
Members of PiS said the exhibition made it seem Poles played a
bigger role in the expulsion of Jews than they did in reality. It
also included anti-Semitic quotes from individuals linked to the
ruling party.
Stola joined other former museum directors who have complained of
excessive political interference since PiS came to power in 2015.
"A large part of the ruling party's efforts aim to sweep unpleasant
things under the rug, and this is a distortion of history," Stola
told Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny.
Stola was chosen by a selection committee last year for a second
term as director, but Culture Minister Piotr Glinski refused to
confirm the appointment. Stola left earlier this month.
Critics accuse PiS of not doing enough to quell rising anti-Semitism
in Poland, home to one of the world's biggest Jewish communities
before World War Two.
(Reporting by Joanna Plucinska, Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk and Justyna
Pawlak; Editing by Giles Elgood)
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