Exhibiting One's Own History: Jewish Museums in Berlin and Warsaw Before the Shoah

Jewish museums emerged in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Initiated and curated by local Jewish communities, they can be considered early predecessors of identity museums. The Nazis looted, closed, and destroyed the houses and their collections.

In her talk, Sylvia Bailey introduces the Jewish Museum Berlin, which opened in January 1933, just a few days before the Nazis came to power, following a lengthy period of preparation. The objects collected and displayed there, were an expression of a strong Jewish community that represented itself through material culture such as coins and fine arts as well as traditional religiously themed objects.

In her lecture, Marta Kapełuś sheds light on the unusual journey taken by some of the items in the Berlin collection, via Lower Silesia, to postwar Warsaw. Photographs from this iconographic archive, which has been preserved in this way, are on display in the current exhibition »Images of Identity« at the Jewish Historical Institute, which she curated.

In contrast, Dorothea Warneck discusses the Jewish Museum, which was established in Warsaw even before the First World War. She shows that, unlike in Berlin, the focus here was primarily on collecting religious objects.

Following their discussion with Julia Roos, the three speakers will then explore the similarities and differences between the concepts and collections of the Berlin and Warsaw museums, and examine how these reflect the self-image of the respective local Jewish communities.