WARSAW (JTA) — Poland’s culture minister accused the head of the country’s main Jewish museum of politicizing his institution and said it’s why the director’s tenure has not been extended.
The minister, Piotr Glinski, said Dariusz Stola, who heads the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, “runs a very aggressive politics at the museum and that “did great harm to this institution by politicizing it.”
Stola made his remarks Tuesday during a radio interview.
In May, a search committee recommended keeping Stola, who became director a year after the museum opened to acclaim in 2013. The Culture Ministry has not yet said whether it will accept the recommendation.
Last year, the museum organized an exhibition on the anti-Semitic campaign of March 1968, as a result of which several thousand Jews left Poland. The exhibition also showed examples of contemporary anti-Semitism.
In a recent interview with The New Yorker, Stola said he has been criticized by both the right and left: the “marginal left” because the museum “did not sufficiently highlight the history of anti-Semitism in Poland” and the “marginal right” demanded more stories about Poles who rescued Jews.
