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

This exhibition explores the history and resilience of early Jewish museums in Europe, which emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as early pioneers of identity-based cultural spaces. Focusing on the distinct paths of the Berlin and Warsaw Jewish museums, the project examines how local communities represented their self-image through material culture, ranging from fine arts and coins to traditional religious objects, before these collections were systematically looted and destroyed by the Nazi regime.

Featuring insights from experts Sylvia Bailey, Marta Kapełuś, and Dorothea Warneck, the exhibition traces the unique, often fragmented journeys of these artifacts. Highlights include a rare iconographic archive from the 1933 Berlin collection that survived via Lower Silesia to postwar Warsaw, contrasted with the pre-WWI Warsaw museum’s distinct focus on religious preservation. Through this comparative lens, the exhibition investigates the similarities and differences in how these historic collections reflected Jewish self-perception, offering a powerful dialogue on cultural memory, loss, and identity.