Galicia Jewish Museum in Poland Showcases JDC Archival Photos in Upcoming Exhibit
“Rescue, Relief, and Renewal: 100 Years of ’the Joint’ in Poland” will open on October 30, 2014, at the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow. The exhibit features almost 100 images from the JDC Archives image collection which portray JDC’s extensive social welfare and humanitarian activities in Poland through the decades to the present day.
A collaboration of the Galicia Jewish Museum, the JDC Archives, and JDC Poland, the exhibit is co-curated by Tomasz Strug, Chief Curator of the Galicia Jewish Museum and Dr. Anna Sommer Schneider, a Polish scholar and historian who recently published a book about JDC’s relief work in Poland in the postwar period. Dr. Sommer Schneider conducted research in the JDC Archives over the last 8 years.
“Rescue, Relief and Renewal” showcases images of JDC’s vital activities in eight broad areas: Health Care and Feeding Programs: Vocational Training and “Productivization;” Children; Assistance to the Elderly; Education and Yiddishkeit—Jewish Heritage and Tradition; Refugees, Emigration and Victims of Persecutions; Jewish Community Life: and The Joint Today.
The accompanying catalogue, rich in photos, provides historical context for JDC’s century of activity in Poland. It highlights early relief shipments of food, medicine, and supplies during World War I; extensive work in the interwar years, the Holocaust era and its aftermath, and JDC’s return to Poland to sustain Holocaust survivors. More recent efforts to nourish a growing Jewish renewal in the post-Communist years to the present are also featured. “Rescue, Relief, and Renewal: 100 Years of ‘the Joint’ in Poland” testifies to JDC’s ongoing commitment to Polish Jewry.
The exhibit will extend until August 2015, after which it will be available for traveling exhibits. Institutions interested in hosting the exhibit should contact the Galicia Jewish Museum at [email protected].
For additional images evoking JDC’s work in Poland, visit our Collection Highlight of Post-World War I Poland Photos. Please view a brief promotional video below about the exhibit!
