The Heart of the City That Once Was

The year 1944 saw the foundation of the Central Committee of Jews in Poland (CKŻP), which then established the Central Jewish Historical Commission (CKŻH). In the very first days after the liberation – before the formal end of World War II – the Commission began collecting testimonies from Holocaust Survivors, seeking to document the tragic fate of the Jewish people under the German occupation and help assemble materials to be used in the trials of war criminals. In 1947, the CKŻH was transformed into the Jewish Historical Institute with its seat in 5 Tłomackie Street in Warsaw – the building of the former Main Judaic Library. 

On 27 November 1947, the newly established Jewish Historical Institute published its first circular, in which it outlined its main objectives, such as the “collection, organisation, edition, and publication of documentary material concerning the history of Jews in Poland”. The circular bore a round stamp of the Jewish Historical Institute operating at the Central Committee of Jews in Poland. 

The subsequent years brought many hardships to the renascent Jewish community in Poland. In 1950, the CKŻP was dissolved. With the swelling wave of antisemitism in the 1950s, dozens of thousands of Jews left Poland. Another blow came with the events of March 1968. Over the seven decades of its operation, the JHI has several times changed its name and structure. In 2008, its patron became Emanuel Ringelblum – the creator of the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, the most valuable treasure in the institution’s collection. For all these years, the Institute has been consequently fulfilling its mission, which was initially legitimised with the stamp you see in the photo. 

The stamp is a small, seemingly insignificant object – and yet it has a profound meaning. It is the embodiment of the institution’s authority, its symbol. It is imbued with history – not just of the JHI but also of the entire Jewish community. It verifies its existence and bears testament to the fact that even though the Holocaust was meant to wipe out an entire nation, this nation survived and made great efforts to rebuild its life in Poland – at the same time giving us the obligation to keep up these efforts today. It is truly a great responsibility.

In our digital repository, the object can be viewed in the highest quality.

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Supported by Norway and EEA Grants from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway and the national budget #EEAGrants #Funduszenorweskie #EOG #EEANorwayGrants