Warsaw museum row ends in a compromise
► A YEAR-LONG impasse which had threatened the functioning of Warsaw’s Museum of the History of Polish Jews (Polin) is over after a compromise candidate became the new director.
Poland’s Ministry of Culture, the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute (JHI) of Poland, and the Mayor of Warsaw agreed last week that Zygmunt Stepinski’s position as acting director would be made permanent.
Mr Stepinski “enjoys the trust of the team and the museum’s donors and Jewish communities in Poland and abroad,” JHI chair Piotr Wislicki and Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski said in a statement.
The new director will lead the museum for three years.
Dariusz Stola, Polin’s former director, paved the way for the appointment last week when he announced that he would give up his claim to the role. He has not been at work since February last year, and Culture Minister Piotr Glinski had effectively vetoed the recommendation of a competition organised by his ministry, JHI, and the Mayor of Warsaw to reappoint him.
Prof Stola had often clashed with Poland’s far-right populist government during his tenure at Polin. He protested a law passed in February 2018 that critics said could prevent historians from pointing out individual Poles had collaborated with the Nazis during the Holocaust.
A March 2018 exhibition in Polin that drew attention to the communist regime’s antisemitic campaign of 1968 and reflected on contemporary antisemitism in Poland also drew the government’s ire.
In a statement, Mr Stola said he was aware of the “damage” being caused to the museum by the current impasse, adding he wished to act in Polin’s “best interest” by stepping aside.
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, chief curator of Polin’s core exhibition, praised Mr Stola as “brilliant”, adding he had endured a “humiliating year with his characteristic integrity and dignity”.
Mr Wislicki and Mr Trzaskowski had warned the failure to appoint a permanent figurehead posed “a real and serious threat to the functioning of Polin”.
Supporters said the compromise was made “for the sake of the Museum and of the Polish national interests which suffer due to the ongoing controversies over the nomination for the post of director of one of the leading institutions of culture in Poland.”
The previous director often clashed with the populist government’