Poland to create ‘Righteous Among Nations’ museum
28.10.2010 10:48
http://www.thenews.pl/international/...ns-museum.html
Poland is to build a Righteous Among Nations museum dedicated to the thousands of Poles who are commemorated at Yad Vashim in Jerusalem, who saved Jews during WW II Nazi occupation.
The museum is to be built in the village of Markowa, near Rzeszow, southern Poland, where the Ulma family was slaughtered by the Nazis after hiding eight people from two Jewish families. The Nazis raided their house in March 1944 and the Jews were immediately shot: the same fate was later met by the pregnant Wiktoria Ulma and her husband.
Seven members of the Weltz family were also hidden in the barn of Dorota and Antoni Szylar in the same village.
Visitors to the museum will be able to watch multimedia shows and video accounts of the gruesome events during WW II and walk the reconstructed street of a pre-war Jewish town.
“It’s a wonderful idea,” Miriam Akawia, an Israeli novelist who survived Holocaust told the Rzeczpospolita daily.
“Poland should be proud of the Polish Righteous, who were real heroes. During the war Poland was the only country where hiding Jews meant a death sentence. Nevertheless it is the Polish who constitute the biggest group among the Righteous. Over 6,000 Poles put their lives at risk to save Jews. Unfortunately, not many people are aware of that,” she added.