The Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw was created in 1947. Housed in the Jewish Library building, it documents the life, history and culture of the Polish Jews who had lived in the country for centuries.
After the Second World War, Warsaw stood derelict and empty. Virtually all of the 400,000 Jews who had lived in the city had disappeared and the city's Great Synagogue had been destroyed. The work of the institute started towards the end of the war, when surviving Jews began collecting books, archives and documents, sometimes literally rifling through the old destroyed ghetto. Now, the museum is home to the biggest library of Jewish works in Central Europe.
The library contains around 70,000 volumes, many written in English, Russian and Polish and around half in Hebrew and Yiddish. It also has a collection of centuries-old Talmud commentaries, Kabalistic texts and astronomical and medical texts handwritten in Hebrew and Aramaic.
The building is next to the site of the Great Synagogue, now replaced by the Blue Tower, a modern office block. The institute's museum, with a multimedia display, presents Jewish life during the war. The aim of the display is not to mourn the dead, but rather to celebrate the lives of those involved.