The construction of the Museum of History of Polish Jews in Warsaw has reached its halfway mark, according to city's officials.
The future museum is to face the imposing black stone monument dedicated to those who died in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
It is being built in a district of Warsaw that during the Holocaust was inside the infamous Warsaw Ghetto.
Nazi Germany imprisoned more than 400,000 Polish Jews inside the Ghetto, the vast majority of whom died of starvation or disease or were sent to death camps.
The future museum is one of the most significant cultural investments in the Polish capital in recent years.
It is intended to commemorate the life of the Polish Jewish community, once the largest in Europe, throughout a millennium.
Prior to WWII, Poland was home to some 3.5 million Jews, roughly 10 percent of its pre-war population with nearly a millennium of Jewish settlement within its borders.
Some three million Polish Jews perished in the Shoah which claimed six million of pre-WWII Europe's 11 million Jews.
"This project is very important for us. Above all, this building is for historical awareness, tolerance and understanding between nations whose destinies were weaved together for hundreds of years." Warsaw Mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz told reporters on Thursday at the museum’s site.
The museum complex, designed by Finnish architect Rainer Mahlamaki, stretches over 15,000 square meters.
It is planned to include 7 permanent exhibitions, space for temporary displays, an educational center, a cinema and conference halls. It features unique and complex architectural structures such as curved walls.
According to the museum’s director Jerzy Halberstadt, the building is scheduled to be completed in March 2012.
"We expect it to be an extraordinary work of architecture, which will serve the aim of education and the development of Jewish culture in Poland , but also the promotion of Warsaw and Poland in the wider world," he said.
The cornerstone for the museum was laid in June 2007.
Slated to cost a total 144 million dollars (108 million euro), the museum is being co-financed by the Polish government, the city of Warsaw and funds raised from private donors from Europe and North America.
The installation of the exhibitions is estimated at about 25 million euro, to be raised by the Polish Jewish Historical Institute. So far the institute has raised about fifth of the desired amount.
On Wednesday, internationally renowned Polish jazz trumpeter Tomasz Stanko performed at the National Philharmonic Hall in Warsaw, as part of a fundraising concert for the museum.
The concert, dubbed ‘Music for a Better World’, was also held last year, featuring famous Jewish American violinist Joshua Bell.