Auschwitz Jewish Center in Oświęcim

About

The Auschwitz Jewish Center is a non-governmental organization whose mission is to preserve the memory of the Jewish community of the city of Oświęcim and educate about the dangers of anti-Semitism, racism and other prejudices and intolerance. The Center runs the Jewish Museum in Oświęcim highlighting the history of the local Jewish community, looks after the only preserved synagogue in the city, the Khevre Loymdei Mishnayos Synagogue, and the home of the last Jewish resident of Oświęcim, Shimson Kleuger, which now incorporates a café along with exhibition and educational space. The Auschwitz Jewish Center makes the Jewish cemetery in Oświęcim, owned by the Jewish community in Bielsko-Biała, available to visitors.

In 1995, the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation was established in New York with the aim of creating a Jewish cultural and educational center in Oświęcim. A year later, a sister organization, Fundacja Edukacyjne Centrum Żydowskie in Oświęcim, was established in order to carry out this task. In September 2000, the Jewish Center was officially opened.

Before the Holocaust, Oswiecim was a bustling town with a mostly Jewish population with synagogues, study houses, clubs, schools, shops and other businesses. Jews had lived there for centuries and were active in all spheres of life. Only a few physical traces remain. The Center carries out its mission by making these traces available to visitors. Visitors can take advantage of guided tours of the Museum, as well as the city. Educational workshops on Judaism, the history of Jews in Oświęcim and human rights are offered for school groups from Poland and abroad. Special study programs on the history of the Holocaust as well as contemporary prejudices and hate-motivated violence are prepared for students, teachers and uniformed services.

The Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation (AJCF) hosts an annual dinner in New York City, starting in 2022, where the foundation grants a "Fighting Hatred" award. The first dinner was held in June at the Intrepid Museum in Manhattan. In its inaugural year, the award was presented to Austrian and American actor and former governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger, who then visited Auschwitz in September that year with foundation chairman Simon Bergson, who is the son of survivors of the camp.

In 2026, AJCF director general Jack Simony launched the RISE Leadership initiative (an acronym for "resilience, inspiration, solidarity and education"), which brings together students from historically black colleges and universities and Jewish institutions for joint trips to Poland, Ghana and New York. That year, the program took students from Wilberforce University and Touro University to Warsaw, the Treblinka extermination camp and the Auschwitz concentration camp. In 2026, RISE plans to take students to Ghana as well, to learn about the African diaspora.

The Jewish Museum is located in a building adjacent to the synagogue, which was previously owned by the Kornreich and Dattner families. The permanent exhibition is called "Oshpitzin. The History of Jewish Oświęcim” and presents over 400 years of Jewish presence in Oświęcim through photographs, archival documents, historic exhibits and multimedia, including recorded accounts of former inhabitants of Oświęcim.

The Jewish Museum exhibits items found during excavations performed in 2004-2005 on the area of the destroyed Great Synagogue in Oświęcim. The work was carried out by archaeologists from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, under the supervision of dr Małgorzata Grupa, during which the team recovered over 400 elements of the temple's equipment. The items were subsequently renovated and catalogued as part of the Jewish Museum Collection. The Ner Tamid (Hebrew for eternal light) was found, along with other items, during the archaeological work carried out in the area of the Great Synagogue on Berka Joselewicza Street in 2004. The lamp was most often hung above or by the Aron Kodesh (previously in a niche on the western wall of the synagogue) and was lit regardless of whether the synagogue is empty or closed. This tradition is meant to remind of the constantly lit menorah in the ancient Temple of Jerusalem.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.