The Jewish Community Museum

The idea of creating a Jewish museum in Lviv dates back to the early 20th century and was repeatedly expressed by Maksymilian Goldstein, a local collector, at meetings of the Jewish community in 1910. Nevertheless, his project was not supported, so the museum's institutional history started in the interwar period. In the early 1920s, however, Goldstein's extensive collection was open to the public in his home at Nowy Świat 15 Street. The National King Jan III Museum, accessible at Blacharska 10 Street, and the Craft Museum (its present-day address is prosp. Svobody 20) also had Jewish collections. A precondition for the creation of a separate Jewish museum was the opening of the Curatorium (board of curators) for the Care of Jewish Monuments attached to the Jewish Religious Community of Lviv (pol. Kuratorjum Opieki nad Zabytkami Sztuki Żydowskiej przy Żydowskiej Gminie Wyznaniowej we Lwowie), which was founded in 1925 on the initiative of architect Józef Awin. The Curatorium included Rabbi Lewi Freund, art collector Marek Reichenstein, and Maksymilian Apenzeller. It was headed by the then president of the community, Maurycy Alerhand. The Curatorium's tasks included making an inventory of Jewish cultural memorabilia through photography and sketching, "rational" conservation, and educational activities to raise awareness of the Jewish heritage value.

The Curatorium included some other members of Lviv's Jewish elite as well. Wiktor Chajes, a City Council deputy and future vice-president of Lviv, was responsible for contacts with the Leopolis Society, an organization that was involved in both charity and the fight against anti-Semitism. Abraham Alter and Józef Korkes were in charge of contacts with synagogue managers. Communication with young people was handled by Dr Cecylia Klaften, director of the girls' craft school, and Professor Abraham Erlich. Architects Leopold Reiss, Zygmunt Sperber, Artur Stahl, and Józef Fisch were engaged in architectural monuments and cemeteries supervision. In total, the Curatorium consisted of fourteen members. The institution's work was funded chiefly by the Jewish community, with subsidies from the Union of Bnei Brith Humanitarian Organizations in Poland, the Bnei Brith Society of Lviv, and the Jewish Civic Union. The budget of the organization was 2500-3000 zlotys per year.

The motivation for the creation of such an institution was concern about the condition of preserved Jewish monuments in Galicia. In their texts, representatives of the Curatorium complained about the improper use and lack of understanding of the artistic and historical value of objects. For example, due to the rebuilding and renovation of synagogues, authentic ancient architectural elements were destroyed, parochets (decorated fabrics covering the Aron ha-Kodesh) were cut and sewn anew, and silverware was repaired by tinsmiths rather than by real specialists. The ensembles of old Jewish cemeteries with carved headstones were being destroyed due to the appearance of new standard matzevot. Non-Jewish organizations involved in the protection of monuments in Galicia occasionally paid attention to Jewish sites, but considered them to be more of a common heritage of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and did not distinguish the specifics of their preservation.

A 1928 report shows that the Curatorium inventoried 292 objects and two architectural objects in Lviv and in nearby towns such as Zhovkva and Yaniv. Among the most frequently encountered items were crowns and shields for the Torah, atzei chaim ("trees of life", i.e. wooden poles to which Torah parchment is attached), and yads (pointers for reading the Torah). At the time of the museum's opening, more than a thousand photographs of the objects were taken.

The next step in the Curatorium's activities was the creation of the Society of the Jewish Museum's Friends (pol. Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Muzeum Żydowskiego) in 1931, headed by Marek Reichenstein. The society's tasks were to raise funds for the opening of the museum, to  preserve Jewish material heritage, and to inform the public. There were also plans for the establishment of a library. Marek Reichenstein died in 1932, and it was at his funeral that his widow, philanthropist Ada Reichenstein, began raising funds for the museum.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the Curatorium organized several exhibitions of Jewish art in Lviv to draw public attention to the idea of preserving Jewish heritage. In particular, they emphasized the poor state of affairs in the country and tried to show how the beauty of material objects showed the influence of Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and their connections with Genoa, Venice, or Constantinople. The most famous exhibition was held in 1933 in the Craft Museum on Hetmańska Street (now prosp. Svobody 20, the building of the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum). The exhibition was initiated by the Craft Museum itself, but it was basically carried out by the Curatorium, the managers of the Golden Rose and Great synagogues and the synagogues in Brody and Ternopil, as well as the Society of the Jewish Museum's Friends and private collectors such as Maksymilian Goldstein, Dr Megler, and N. Siegel. In addition to ritual objects and applied art works, the exhibition also featured more contemporary works of art, such as illustrations for the Passover Haggadah by Artur Szyk. This exhibition shows that the idea of preserving Jewish artefacts was also supported by the city's non-Jewish institutions, Lviv becoming a focal place for the care of the Jewish heritage of eastern Galicia.

The museum was opened in 1934 under the name Museum of the Jewish Religious Community in Lviv (pol. Muzeum Żydowskiej Gminy Wyznaniowej we Lwowie). It was located on the top floor of the Jewish religious community building at Bernsteina 12 Street (now Sholom-Aleykhema Street) and consisted of five rooms and a corridor. Guidebooks about Lviv included the museum in their listings and reported that it was open to visitors daily, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., free of charge. It was the only Jewish museum in Poland accessed so easily; for example, the Bersohn Jewish Museum in Warsaw, named in honour of the art historian Mathias Bersohn (1824-1908), was accessible only by appointment.

The museum project was made possible due to the activities and financial support of Lviv's vice president, Wiktor Chajes, who was also the leader of the Jewish community. In his diary, he recalls the museum opening, which was attended by over 400 visitors. The speeches were delivered by Wiktor Chajes himself, Rabbi Lewi Freund, Józef Awin, and historian and archivist Aleksander Czolowski. The event was attended by the President of Lviv, Wacław Drojanowski. Wiktor Chajes, who was an advocate of assimilation, considered the museum to be primarily his own work and was indignant that the Zionist newspaper "Chwila" did not mention him in its lengthy article about the museum's opening.

Marek Reichenstein, Lewi Freund, and Józef Awin helped to create the collection. The museum's custodian was Ludwik Lille, an artist and historian. The museum's curatorium (pol. Kuratorium Muzeum Gminy Wyznaniowej Żydowskiej) included both representatives of the Society of the Jewish Museum's Friends and members of the community. The curatorium was divided into several sections, each dealing with a different area of work. Among them were the museum section, the section in charge of cemeteries and synagogues, the section in charge of legal matters, and the section in charge of spreading information. In 1938, the museum adopted a charter. According to the charter, the museum's collection consisted of both religious and everyday objects of artistic value — a total of 809 artefacts. Some of them were owned by the Jewish community, most were owned by the Society of the Jewish's Friends, and some were in use and belonged to private collectors. The museum displayed objects from Lviv and other cities and towns.

Thematically, the exposition was divided into two parts: objects of worship and everyday objects. Religious items included liturgical silverware, boxes for bsamim (incense), and a collection of parochets. Everyday objects included ceramics made by Jewish workers in Lubycza Królewska, as well as so-called dymki, specially printed cloths made by Jewish dyers, whose craft had disappeared due to the spread of factory-made fabrics. Another example of folk art was mizrahi, i.e. paper-cuts that were placed on the eastern side of the house, or Purim masks painted by children.

The museum's collection included the collection of Dr Marek Reichenstein, which was displayed in a separate room, including a collection of ketubot, illuminated Jewish marriage contracts from Italy, the oldest of which dated back to the 16th century.

The museum's collection was replenished by gifts or deposits from synagogues, such as those in Stryi, Yavoriv, and Zhovkva, or from individuals. The museum also organized temporary exhibitions, such as the one dedicated to the Passover in April 1939. The exhibition featured Passover Haggadot, i.e. special collections of texts read during the Passover. The exhibition included the Amsterdam Haggadah from 1712, the Venetian Haggadah from 1629, and the Trieste Haggadah from 1864, ceramics from Lubycza Królewska and Potelych, silverware and glassware, as well as Jewish clothing.

In the late 1930s, the Jewish Museum faced various challenges. One of them was the departure of the custodian Ludwik Lille to Paris, which necessitated the search for a new employee. The museum's location in the Jewish community building was inconvenient, but renting a new building was too expensive. The museum's funding remained unstable.

In 1940, during the Soviet occupation, the Museum was closed, its collection was transferred to the Craft Museum. Even before the closure, Maksymilian Goldstein was appointed temporary director of the Jewish Museum and later joined the scientific staff of the Craft Museum. The collection survived the Nazi occupation, but after the end of the Second World War it was distributed among the Lviv Museum of Ethnography (founded on the basis of the Craft Museum), the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism (now the Museum of the History of Religion), the Lviv Art Gallery, and the Lviv Historical Museum. Some of the books from the collection were transferred to the Vasyl Stefanyk Library.

After Ukraine regained its independence, the Museum of the History of Religion, the Museum of Ethnography, and the Art Gallery displayed some of the museum's collection in temporary exhibitions. However, there is still no separate Jewish museum in Lviv that uses prewar collections. Instead, there is a small single-room museum in the premises of the Hesed-Arieh Society. In recent years, an initiative to reestablish a Jewish museum in Lviv has been launched, which includes the description and cataloguing of Jewish memorabilia in Lviv's museums and galleries.