"Museum on Wheels" Ends Its Journey

Mateusz Szczepaniak, 16 November 2016
The Museum on Wheels, the POLIN Museum's travelling exhibition, has ended its travels this year around western and northern Poland. On this journey, it displayed our exhibition "They Risked their Lives - Poles Who Saved Jews During the Holocaust". Over the course of three months, it travelled to 22 cities where it was visited by over 25,000 people.

The Museum on Wheels is a modern travelling exhibition which utilises rich educational resources which tell the 1,000 year history of Polish Jews.

From 2014, it has been travelling to towns where, before the War, Jews constituted at least a dozen or so per cent of the population. The Museum, above all, is a recognition of those local organisations and individuals who spend time and their resources in looking after the remnants of a Jewish presence in their town. It is together with them that events are arranged and held which accompany the Museum's visit.

In this years travels, the Museum contained an exhibition presenting the stories of the Righteous Among the Nations. Thanks to the Museum on Wheels, thousands of people throughout Poland have come to know the stories of these heroes who risked their lives, and the lives of their families, helping persecuted Jews.

Accompanying the Museum in its latest journey, competitions were held in eighteen towns (Pleszew, Bytów, Mirosławiec, Szamotuły, Koźminek, Krotoszyn, Kępno, Namysłów, Ziębice, Żarki, Czeladź, Łazy, Pińczów, Wodzisław Śląski, Cieszyn, Kłodzko, Kamienna Góra, Żary) and festivals were held in four cities  (Poznań, Wrocław, Kielce, Kostrzyn nad Odrą - Przystanek Woodstock). From May to August, over 25,000 people took part in activities around the Museum's pavilion.

The exhibition "They Risked Their Lives - Poles Who Saved Jews During the Holocaust" was prepared in 2013 by the POLIN Museum in partnership with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Since that time, it has gone on display in numerous locations overseas, including Paris, Madrid, Moscow, Vilnius, Dusseldorf, Havana and Melbourne. It has been translated into five languages - English, Spanish, German, Russian and Lithuanian.

There is more about the Museum of Wheels' travels on the  POLIN Museum's website and on the Museum on Wheels' Facebook page.