The Hanukkah whirligig was donated to the POLIN Museum by Artur Cyruk, a military man who is passionate about the history of Polish Jews and the initiator of the "Atlantis" project which aims to protect Jewish cemeteries in Podlasie.
The Hanukkah toy is called drejdl in Yiddish or seviwon in Hebrew. It is a toy popular with children during Hanukkah, a holiday celebrated to commemorate the victorious Jewish uprising and the rededication of the Jerusalem Temple (https://sztetl.org.pl/pl/slownik/chanuka). Hanukkah was largely celebrated in homes, hence the popularity of family games.
Please see the entry "Toys and Games" on The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe website (https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Toys_and_Games, accessed 06.09.2020)
The presented Hanukkah toy is a four-walled object with a handle, tapered on one side, with the Hebrew letters nun, gimel, he and shin arranged on the walls forming the acronym of the Hebrew phrase "Nes gadol haya sham" (A great miracle happened there).
The presence of spinning tops in Jewish culture can be traced back to antiquity (more specifically, the Greco-Roman period), but dreidels of modern form have become commonplace since the Middle Ages among Ashkenazi Jews.
Hanukkah, as an act of struggle and victory for the Jewish people, was a frequently cited holiday by Zionist activists.
Zionist journalist and poet Wilhelm Berkelhammer wrote in his work ("Literatura polsko-żydowska 1861-1918. Antologia" [Polish-Jewish Literature 1861-1918. Anthology], ed. Z Kołodziejska-Smaga, M. Antosik-Piela, Kraków 2017, pp. 26-27):
"Turn on the lights! Let them shine
Into the dark, gloomy night
Let the ghostly shadows flush out
From the fountains of your Power!
Turn on the lights! Let them burn
Through day and night - without end
So that brightness rises in your hearts
As before the face of the sun!
Turn on the lights! Let them shine
With brightness your heads
Let the Judean New Nation rise from the dead among the lights!
The Judean New Nation!"
Natalia Różańska