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New museum in Poland -- the grandest space created since 1989 -- tells the story of the Jews

With anti-Semitism having become more prominent again across Europe, something quite different is growing in a huge, translucent building at the center of a vanished neighborhood in Warsaw.

After several days of concerts, seminars, festivals and hoopla, the core exhibition of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews — the most ambitious cultural institution to rise in Poland since the fall of Communism — will be unveiled on Tuesday. Poland’s top political leaders will be there, as will the president of Israel and other international dignitaries. The institution has been embraced across the political spectrum and has drawn only scattered, mild protest.

In eight sprawling galleries, packed with multimedia exhibitions and artifacts, the museum traces the history of Jews from their first appearance in Poland in the Middle Ages to the present day. The Holocaust, the part of the story that is most often remembered, fills only one of the eight galleries.

Read entire article at NYT