Jewish Museum in Oświęcim/Auschwitz

Jewish Museum in Oświęcim/Auschwitz

Oshpitzin Jewish Museum in Oświęcim/Auschwitz opened in 2000 as a project of the Polish-American Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation (AJCF). The foundation was established in 1995 at the initiative of American philanthropist Fred Schwartz (1931–2016) to restore Oświęcim's only surviving synagogue and create a space to commemorate the history of the Jews who contributed to the city for four centuries. The foundation's mission is to preserve the memory of Oświęcim's Jewish people and to teach about the contemporary dangers of anti-Semitism and other prejudices. We run the Jewish Museum and manage the historic Chevra Lomdei Mishnayot Synagogue, the Great Synagogue Memorial Park, the Jewish Cemetery, and the Kluger House, where Café Bergson is now located. We deliver local and international education programmes for children, young people and adults, including teachers, soldiers and police officers.

 

The museum's collection includes objects, documents, photographs, works of art, archaeological artefacts, digital collections (including oral history recordings) and all other memorabilia connected to the history of Jewish Oświęcim residents from the second half of the 16th century to the present day. A special part of the collection comprises archaeological artefacts discovered at the site of the Great Synagogue in Oświęcim, destroyed by the Germans during World War II (2004), and a collection of objects, mostly personal, belonging to Szymon Kluger (1925–2000), the last Jewish resident of Oświęcim.