The World Jewish Relief organisation is to build a centre for the Jewish community in Krakow under the patronage of Britain’s Prince Charles, a community official in the southern Polish city said on Tuesday.
"The centre will be built in the heart of the Jewish quarter of Kazimierz and will house Jewish organisations and serve as a meeting place," Jewish community leader Tadeusz Jakubowicz told Agence France Presse.
"There will be a social centre for the elderly, a conference hall and a
cafe," he said.
Prince Charles had expressed a desire to help Krakow’s Jewish community after he visited the city in June 2002, as Kazimierz was undergoing a renaissance, London-based World Jewish Relief and Jakubowicz said.
"The prince appreciated the numerous initiatives under way in Kazimierz," Jakubowicz said.
"He asked me how he could help us. Four weeks later, representatives of the World Jewish Relief foundation came here to discuss a project to build a Jewish centre."
The centre is expected to be completed at the end of next year, Jakubowicz said.
Kazimierz was founded for Jews in 1335 by King Casimir the Great, who gave Jews civil rights that they did not enjoy in many other countries in Europe, and guaranteed them a peaceful life.
Originally separate and independent from the rest of Krakow, Kazimierz was later incorporated into the city, while remaining a Jewish district.
In WWII, when Poland was occupied by Nazi Germany, Krakow’s Jews
were rounded up and sent to a ghetto in Podgorze, a southern suburb of Krakow.
Many of them perished, either in the ghetto or at Nazi death camps set up in Poland, in particular nearby Auschwitz.
From a pre-war population of more than 60,000, or about 25 percent of Krakow’s population, the Jewish community in the city was decimated by the Holocaust and numbered only around 5,900 in 1948.
By 1978, after 30 years of communist rule, the number had dwindled to 600.
Today, Krakow’s Jewish community numbers some 150, almost belying attempts to revive Kazimierz as a Jewish community.
Founded in 1933, World Jewish Relief backs the renewal of Jewish communities around the world, including providing basic welfare support.
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