Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich

Resource Center

Resource Center is a place for all POLIN Museum visitors who wish to deepen their knowledge of the history of Jews, and who are seeking material for school and research work. Among others, the Center provides access to the unique collections of the Fortunoff Archive and the USC Shoah Foundation Institute.

Resource Center’s staff offer their experience in source queries, can assist in searching databases, provide historical consultations and also on how to preserve and care of Jewish heritage material.

Resource Center is located on the ground floor (Level 0) of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, next to the Museum’s shop. Admission is free.

The Resource Center is open on Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays (on request on other working days, too): 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM and 1:30 PM – 4:00 PM. Online consultations are also possible.
 
In order to use the library and recordings from the collections of the Fortunoff Archive and USC Shoah Foundation’s Institute, we recommend booking in advance (email: [email protected]).

 

At Resource Center, we offer:

  • full access to interviews with witnesses to history from the USC Shoah Foundation (approximately 55,000 recordings),
  • the Fortunoff Video Archive (4,400 recordings),
  • the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews (including the March’68 collection, the Righteous Among the Nations), as well as Centropa’s collection.

We also offer full access to the databases, on genealogy, of:

  • MyHeritage,
  • Ancestry,
  • Kraków Jewish Genealogy.

We support searching the databases of:

  • Jewish Records Indexing - Poland,
  • Gesher Galicia,
  • JewishGen,
  • the Yad Vashem Database of Holocaust Victims,
  • the Database of Holocaust Survivors and Victims of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington,
  • the Virtual Shtetl portal of the POLIN Museum,
  • the Polish Righteous portal of the POLIN Museum.

We offer a reading room with books on Judaism, as well as on the history, culture and heritage of Jews in Poland. (SEARCH THE CATALOGUE).

We also have a collection of maps from the Second Polish Republic and historical city plans and a catalogue of places, from the Second Polish Republic, in both Yiddish and Polish.

In Resource Center, those who are visually impaired can view typhlographs which present selected objects from the Museum’s Core Exhibition and maps. Typhlographics are accompanied by a brochure containing descriptions in Braille.

Descriptions of typhlographics can be downloaded HERE [PDF] >>

We encourage you to take advantage of our genealogical research service >>
 

 

Partners

       

 

Genealogy partner