“Świętokrzyski Shtetl” Education Centre and Museum (Chmielnik)

"Świętokrzyski Shtetl" Education Centre and Museum (Chmielnik)

The Majer Mały Świętokrzyski Shtetl Education Centre and Museum in Chmielnik is a modern museum in a former synagogue. It reminds us how, for several hundred years, Jews and Poles lived side by side in small provincial towns called shtetls. The centre presents information on nearly 100 Jewish communities in the pre-war Kielce region. A museum highlight is the world's only glass bimah – a modernised reconstruction of the ancient bimah, a podium used for public Torah reading.

 

The museum's collection includes objects related to religious practices (Judaica), objects related to everyday life and archival collections.
A separate part of the collection comprises digital collections, including oral history recordings and interviews with witnesses of the history (reports by students participating in the competition "Our neighbours – the Jews").
The collection documents the history of the Jewish community up to World War II. The collected audio and video testimonies preserve, among other things, accounts from witnesses of the history of what daily and religious life was like for the Jewish community before the outbreak of World War II, as well as accounts of the time of the Holocaust.