“They Risked Their Lives…“ Exhibition Again on Show in Melbourne
This time the venue was in Melbourne’s outer eastern suburbs - Dom Polski “Syrena”, home of the Eastern Districts Polish Association who, this time, co-hosted the exhibition together with the Australian Society of Polish Jews & Their Descendants’ (ASPJ) who brought the exhibition to Australia.
The exhibition opened on 1st April 2016 and remained on display for two weeks.
ASPJ Vice-President and long-time POLIN Museum volunteer translator, Andrew Rajcher, said that he was thrilled to be able to show the exhibition to many of those who were unable to see it when it was open to the public in July last year.
“The ASPJ has always enjoyed an excellent relationship with Dom Polski”, he said. “We are extremely pleased that they were eager to host the exhibition in their magnificent premises.”
Andrew Rajcher recently returned from a visit to Sydney with a view to showing the exhibition there. This would also include the screening of the Museum’s film “Ocaleni”.
“While in Sydney, I held positive discussions with the Polish Consul General in Sydney, Regina Jurkowska, together with representatives of B’nai B’rith’s ‘Courage to Care’ program”, said Andrew. “They have agreed to co-host the exhibition and film in Sydney next August. I believe that the exhibition will be open to the public there for four weeks at that time.”
The exhibition was created in 2013 by the POLIN Museum in partnership with the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As well as having been shown once already in Melbourne, the exhibition has had numerous showings abroad including in Paris, Madrid, Moscow, Vilnius, Tallinn, Düsseldorf, Milan, Munich, Havana and Hawaii. It has been translated into six languages – English, Spanish, German, Italian, Russian and Lithuanian.
The exhibition tells the story of the Righteous Among the Nations - Poles who risked their lives, and the lives of their families, to help persecuted Jews. The exhibition shows the fate of the rescuers and the rescued in the historical context of occupied Poland. It explains the scale of help provided and what motivated the Righteous to do what they did.
The exhibition was prepared in the basis of testimonies collected from the Righteous themselves and from those who were rescued. These were collected via the "Polish Righteous – Recalling Forgotten History" internet project of the POLIN Museum.
