Introduction

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of Jewish civilization that developed in Poland about 1,000 years until it was brutally destroyed during the Holocaust. It describes Poland as the centre of the Jewish diaspora and the home to the largest Jewish community in the world as 90 percent of the world's Jews lived in Europe before their mass migration to the USA in the middle of the nineteenth century. It also cites the contributions of the great rabbis of Poland to both Jewish law and Jewish spirituality, including political, artistic, literary, and intellectual movements that have characterized the Jewish world in the modern period. The chapter introduces present-day photographs that offer a completely new and contemporary way of looking at the Jewish past in Poland that was left in ruins. It explains that the photographs serve as a tribute to the rich Jewish cultural heritage of Poland.