‘Serious threat’ to Warsaw Jewish museum as Poland withholds director’s reappointment for nine months

But in spite of having committed to abide by the jury’s verdict, Minister Piotr Gliński has declined to formally reappoint him, according to the JHI chair Piotr Wiślicki and Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski.

He has not been at work since February last year and Polin is currently run by an acting director, Zygmunt Stępiński.

In a statement published last week, Mr Wiślicki and Mr Trzaskowski called the impasse “beyond comprehension” and “damaging to the image of Warsaw as a place devoted to the memory and role of Polish-Jewish heritage in the history of Poland”.

With Mr Stępiński’s term as acting director concluding at the end of February, “the current situation poses a real and serious threat to the functioning of Polin”, they said.

The crisis, they added, “may prove detrimental both to Polin and to Polish-Jewish dialogue”.

Prof Stola was among those protesting the notorious 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 also drew the government’s ire.

In a statement, the Ministry of Culture called the museum’s condition “stable”, with work “proceeding as planned” under the acting director.

The statement contained no indication that Mr Gliński would concede Prof Stola’s reappointment.