Poland’s rich, pre-Holocaust Jewish history is now online with Virtual Shtetl, a project of the almost complete Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
The museum’s creators launched the site last week as part of an effort to build the museum's collection even before its doors open in 2011.
"This portal has the potential to become the greatest source of information about Jewish life in Poland prior to the war," project creator and coordinator Albert Stankowski told reporters in Warsaw Tuesday. He said he hopes the site will open channels of communication and create an international discussion that will revive nearly a thousand years of Jewish life in Poland that were obliterated by the Holocaust. Three million of the six million European Jews exterminated by the Nazis came from Poland.
The bilingual Polish-English website already has information on 800 Polish "shtetls", or Jewish villages, prior to the Holocaust, and site users can contribute information and eyewitness testimony.
Built on the site of the former Warsaw ghetto, the long-awaited Museum of the History of Polish Jews is expected to open in 2011 after more than a decade of preparations.
Visit the English version of the website at:
http://www.sztetl.org.pl/?cid=15&lang=en_GB