The Nissenbaum Family Foundation – a partner institution of the Warsaw Ghetto Museum – celebrated its 40th anniversary last week. The Foundation's founder, survivor Sigmund Nissenbaum, was the prime mover behind the creation of a museum commemorating the Warsaw Ghetto. We are publishing the text of the speech delivered by Gideon Nissenbaum, Sigmund Nissenbaum's son and current president of the Foundation, on April 18th at the Royal Castle in Warsaw.
Eighty years ago, in April 1943, an unsuccessful uprising against the Nazis broke out in the Warsaw Ghetto. The last remaining ghetto inhabitants, however, preferred to perish in the unequal struggle rather than be murdered in Treblinka.
Forty years ago, in 1983, my father, Sigmund Simon Nissenbaum , visited his native Warsaw for the first time since the war, accompanied by my mother and me. He came to the Polish capital as a delegate of the Central Council of Jews in Germany for the 40th anniversary of the commemoration of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. During his visit, he wanted to recite Kaddish—the Jewish prayer for the dead—at the graves of his ancestors. However, what he found in a place where Jewish life had once flourished so horrified him that, driven by a heartfelt need, he decided to stop the further destruction of cemeteries and preserve what remained of Jewish culture.
Since the time of Abraham, Jews have been diligent about burying their dead in consecrated ground. That's why Abraham bought a grave for himself and his wife. Their burial site still exists in Hebron and serves their eternal rest. A person possesses God's soul within them, which also sanctifies the body, meaning that a person does not die with their physical death. In the Jewish faith, there is a belief that at least one such soul always watches over the graves of their loved ones. Whenever people visit the graves of their loved ones, the deceased are aware of this.
My late father's first and most important goal was to save the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw's Bródno district, which contains approximately 328,000 burials, to rest the souls of the Warsaw Jews buried there. To accomplish this, my father had to build a two-kilometer-long concrete foundation with a massive steel fence mounted on it. It's worth remembering that this was at a time when cement and steel were not as easy to obtain as they are today, let alone permission from the authorities who had declared martial law two years earlier. To date, our Foundation has erected fences in cemeteries totaling approximately 40,000 linear meters. After 40 years, I increasingly understand how important this was not only for my late father but also for his homeland, Poland.
The establishment of the Nissenbaum Family Foundation and the approval of its operation by the Polish authorities were the first acts of its kind in Poland after World War II. The Foundation was entrusted with the care and protection of thousands of graves across Poland from destruction and oblivion.
My late father was politically impartial, but he knew well how to diplomatically build bridges between nations and religions. He was a master of improvisation, a man of toughness and tirelessness in pursuing his lofty goals of defending the souls of the dead, the murdered, and the tortured.
In situations that seemed hopeless, this gave him an indescribable energy that allowed him to put an end to the decline and oblivion of Jewish heritage, so that he could preserve it for posterity—a heritage that for centuries has constituted a crucial element of Polish cultural history. It is from this heritage that the roots of countless generations of Jews scattered throughout the world grow.
In this context, we cannot forget the thousands who died. Thanks to our Foundation, their souls have been restored to peace in Jewish cemeteries across Poland, and their graves have been saved from eternal destruction. These cemeteries are the shared cultural heritage of Jews and Poles, documenting the shared, thousand-year history of coexistence between both nations in Poland. Thanks to the Foundation, thousands of Jewish pilgrims come annually to Leżajsk , Lelów , and Szydłowiec – three towns where we have fenced local cemeteries and also renovated, built, or rebuilt ohels.
In Leżajsk and Lelów, our foundation laid the foundation for infrastructure enabling the arrival of devout Jewish pilgrims. The Leżajsk-Poland Hasidic Foundation continued our work so effectively that there are now several kosher hotels and restaurants there, accessible to thousands of Jewish pilgrims from around the world. I would like to take this opportunity to express my special thanks to Rabbi Symche Krakowski and Menashe Liftschitz.
My father also planned to build a Warsaw Ghetto Museum on the former Umschlagplatz site. He prepared the necessary plans and even found original railway carriages from World War II. Unfortunately, these plans never came to fruition because the political climate at the time was not conducive to such a project.
Today, the situation is quite different: the Polish government, in cooperation with the Masovian Voivodeship, has undertaken the project of establishing the Warsaw Ghetto Museum . Both the government and the Masovian Voivodeship authorities have also provided funding. I would therefore like to take this opportunity to thank the Marshal of the Masovian Voivodeship, Mr. Adam Struzik , and to express my gratitude to the Polish government through the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Mr. Piotr Gliński.
For such a museum to be established, good organization and management are essential, enabling a knowledgeable and sensitive approach to such a project. Therefore, I would like to thank the Polish authorities, who placed their trust in me and appointed me to the Warsaw Ghetto Museum Council. Thanks to this, I was able to contribute to the Museum's construction and creation process. I also met the Museum's director, Mr. Albert Stankowski , and his team. I would like to thank the Director for the excellent work he is doing for the museum.
Another goal of my father was to create a worthy museum on the site of the former Treblinka extermination camp . My family has never lost sight of this goal over the years, so it was a special moment for me to be present at the signing of an agreement in November 2018 between the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the authorities of the Mazovian Voivodeship. Thanks to this agreement, the cornerstone was laid for a worthy museum, which is to be built in a few years. The former Treblinka concentration camp is the largest cemetery in Poland. German Nazis murdered approximately 900,000 people in the gas chambers of Treblinka. Their bodies were later burned in pits and at the stake. In this context, I would also like to express my special thanks to the Polish Government and the authorities of the Mazovian Voivodeship for taking on the burden of financing this project, without waiting for support from the Federal Republic of Germany. However, it is the German state that bears a moral obligation to commemorate this site with dignity.
The Treblinka Cemetery, however, will not be forgotten. I have a very personal, emotional connection to Treblinka. It was there, in the spring of 1983, that I first saw my father weeping bitterly, standing by the memorial stone erected there. What a terrible memory that must have been for him… It was there that he last saw his mother and sister alive…
Before my grandmother was herded into the gas chambers of Treblinka, she blessed my father, who was the youngest child in the family, and gave him this message: " You must survive to tell the story of what happened here, so that the world may understand the injustice committed against the Jewish people ." Her words stayed with my father for the rest of his life. He kept asking himself, "Did I really do everything to fulfill what my mother told me to do?"
I believe that because of this blessing and the mission my father received from his mother, he had the strength for many years to overcome the memory of the terrible things he had to experience to survive. Being appointed to the Treblinka Museum Council is a special honor for me, in memory of my grandmother, Blessed Chana-Perla , as well as many other family members whose ashes are scattered in Treblinka. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the director of the Treblinka Museum, Dr. Edward Kopówka , and his team for their good cooperation on the Museum Council.
Twenty years ago, after my father's death, my mother, the late Sonja Nissenbaum , took over the reins of the Foundation as its President. When asked about the Foundation's future, she responded as follows: "We will continue its activities, although the emphasis will be slightly different. This stems from the fact that Jewish communities in Poland are taking on more and more responsibilities related to the protection and maintenance of Jewish cemeteries, supported by the Polish state. In the future, we will focus more on educational activities aimed at young people, thus contributing to building bridges to Europe."
Poland's accession to the European Union alone is not sufficient; it merely provides a foundation for people to integrate, which also means working through history together to better understand each other. It was for this reason that in 2013, the Foundation financially supported the core exhibition at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews and established the "Nissenbaum Family Foundation Educational Fund ." With these funds, the Foundation organized five two-week educational projects in Warsaw between 2015 and 2019 for students from Israel, Poland, Ukraine, and Germany. The Foundation is one of 21 Distinguished Benefactors of the POLIN Museum.
We intend to continue our involvement in preserving cemeteries and sites associated with the martyrdom of the Jewish people. To enable the Foundation to conduct its independent statutory activities, my father, a man of foresight, created the economic foundations that would make this possible. The income generated from this activity enables us to conduct our statutory activities without the need to obtain public funds. The first of these financial foundations is the company Keraniss sp. z o. o., which operates in duty-free zones at airports in Poland, currently in Warsaw and Krakow. We greatly value stable and honest cooperation with the authorities of both airports. It is essential for the operation of the Foundation and its activities. The second financial foundation is the Foundation's business unit, WWG "Nisskosher," which produces kosher vodka. Production is based on old recipes.
I also see the mission that my late grandmother entrusted to my late father as my duty to continue this important task in order to preserve the memory for future generations.
I would like to thank all our guests for joining us in celebrating the Foundation's fortieth anniversary in Poland. I hope you will continue to support us in our endeavors.
Shalom!
