Jewish leaders and Poland's president have attended a ceremony to lay the cornerstone for a museum in the former Warsaw Ghetto.
President Lech Kaczynski said Jewish life flourished in Poland before millions of Jews were killed by Nazi Germany in the Holocaust.
"The history of Jews is the history of my country, my people" he said.
Poland was home to about 3.5 million Jews before World War II, but most of them were killed by the Nazis.
Thousands more emigrated in 1968 after an anti-Semitic campaign by the then-ruling communists. The Jewish community in Poland today is estimated to be fewer than 50,000.
Poland was the site of some of the most notorious Nazi German death camps, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka and Sobibor.
The new museum will be built next to a memorial for the Jews of Warsaw who resisted Nazi rule.
The museum will focus on the history of Poland's Jewish community, which dates back to the 10th Century, as well as the story of the Nazi occupation and the Holocaust.
Construction is expected to take two years with the official opening scheduled for 2010.
The museum building has been designed by Finnish architects Rainer Mahlamaki and Ilmari Lahdelma and will feature glass and limestone.
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