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A chasm in Polish history was bridged this week with the opening of a vast museum dedicated to the country's Jewish past.
"When you are a Jew, even if you were not born in Poland, the very name Poland stirs up trembling and longing in your heart," said Israeli President Reuven Rivlin in his address.
"Although Jews were torn away from Poland, it is difficult, or even impossible to tear Poland away from Jews. It is impossible to erase a history so rich, so full, and so extremely painful."
Once a global powerhouse for Jewish culture, after the Second World War a stunned, decades-long silence on the country's Jewish history ensued.
A pre-war population of 3.5 million had been reduced to a few thousand and, during the Communist era, Jewish observance was all but extinguished.
"We have been deliberately setting in motion processes to tear down shrouds of silence and distortion surrounding relationships with our neighbours," said the Polish President, Bronislaw Komorowski. The core exhibition at the Polin Museum of the History of the Polish Jews, built on the site of the Warsaw ghetto, covers Jewish life from the Middle Ages through the golden age, empire, industrialisation and occupation.
There is a replica of the elaborate vaulted timber ceiling of the Gwozdziec Synagogue, originally painted in the 1730s. There are manuscripts, photos, film footage, marriage certificates, letters and train timetables - even a theatre review printed in the JC in 1964.
"Until now we have only been dealing with the Holocaust," Mr Rivlin told the JC following his whistlestop tour of the exhibition. "This is the opportunity to show how much more there was to Jewish life in Poland for 1,000 years."
Mr Rivlin said he had been most struck by "the people - I saw hundreds of people visiting the museum. That is what is important."
For the Chief Rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich, the museum was "hugely significant" and a "chance for us to give back to the children of the people who created the Judaism that we love."
However, Rabbi Schudrich, who is American, added that there was still work to be done to fully rekindle Jewish life in Poland. "The high point of my career will be when I can be replaced by a young Polish Jew," he said.
In the last few years, antisemitism has increased in Poland, with the rise of the far-right Congress of the New Right party, led by Janusz Korwin-Mikke.
The Chief Rabbi of Krakow, Eliezer Gurary, acknowledged the presence of antisemitism but said that as an Israeli Jew he had always been treated with "great warmth".
"This museum is proof that Poland is taking us seriously again," he said.