Virtual Shtetl is an online project devoted to the history of Jews in Poland. It describes in great detail each city, town and village in which Jews had once lived – from location, history of the town, history of the local Jewish community, trade, education, Jewish organisations and associations, heritage sites, synagogues, cemeteries and so on. The goals of the project are: educating and promoting tolerance, openness and respect for diversity; chronicling whatever remained from the Jewish heritage in Poland; helping local communities discover their rich multicultural heritage; and, finally, preserving the memory of the past by reaching those who still remember prewar, multicultural Poland and life in a typical Polish-Jewish shtetl.

There are approximately 1900 locations available online at the moment. Virtual Shtetl functions as a social network of sorts – each account holder can add text to the website. Aside from articles on the Jewish past in Poland, we also post news related to Jewish history, heritage and contemporary Jewish life; the news section informs the readers about cultural events as well as social actions undertaken to rescue, say, a decrepit former synagogue building or tidy up a neglected Jewish cemetery. Another project within the Virtual Shtetl portal is called "Memory in Stone"; it aims at creating an inventory of tombstones from Jewish cemeteries. On the basis of photographs of matzevot, names of the deceased and inscriptions are being deciphered and translated from Hebrew into English and Polish, and the documentation is subsequently posted on the website.  

Virtual Shtetl team is delighted to offer students the opportunity for an internship with POLIN Museum. The suggested areas of cooperation in further developing and improving Virtual Shtetl are as follows:

Proposal for students of Slavic languages:

-          Editing, proofreading and correcting texts in English from the Virtual Shtetl website

-          Translating textual material from English into Polish and Russian, and from Polish and Russian into English

Proposal for students of history and cultural studies:

-          Interviewing members of local Jewish communities (witnesses to history)

-          Compiling bibliographies of books published abroad, dedicated to various localities in Poland

-          Collecting research material in local libraries and archives

-          Writing and editing historical texts in English

Proposal for students of Jewish studies:

-          Working with archival sources in English, Yiddish and Hebrew

-          Collecting information on various shtetls located within the boundaries of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; compiling articles on the history of various localities based on material provided in Jewish Memorial Books (Yisker Bikher, Sifrei Yizkor).