http://www2.polskieradio.pl/eo/dokument.aspx?iid=128242
Innovative History of Polish Jew Atlas published
26.03.2010
An Atlas of the History of Polish Jews has been launched in Warsaw by Demart Publishers, including an exclusive world map of the Jewish diaspora.
The texts by renowned specialists draw a comprehensive picture of the over 1000 year-long common history of Poles and Jews. They are supplemented with 166 maps, 461 photographs and sketches and 95 diagrams.
The director of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Jerzy Halbersztadt, has described the book as one of fundamental importance.
He said during the launch that a historical map is time and space melted into one.
“For centuries, Jewish civilisation had been developing in the Diaspora. The changing geography of Jewish settlement, enormous importance of religious, cultural, economic and family ties between particular centres – all this can be best explored by running the finger over a map and thus discovering unknown details or noticing spatial relationships and dependencies,” Halbersztadt said.
The maps and diagrams were produced specially for the Atlas. They will be used in the displays in the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, currently under construction.
The texts in the book discuss the beginnings of Jewish statehood and culture in ancienty times, the Diaspora and migration of Jews to Central and Eastern Europe, and the history of Jews in Poland from the Middle Ages to the present.
At the end of the 19th century, over 2.1 million Jews lived in the territory of what was then partitioned Poland. By 1939, their number grew to 3.3 million, accounting for 10 percent of Poland’s population. Ninety percent of them w perished during the Nazi occupation of Poland. (mk/mmj)