POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews
POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews is a museum on the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto. The Hebrew word Polin in the museum's English name means either "Poland" or "rest here" and relates to a legend about the arrival of the first Jews to Poland; the museum's cornerstone was laid in 2007, the museum opened on 19 April 2013. The core exhibition opened in October 2014 and features a multimedia exhibition about the Jewish community that flourished in Poland for a thousand years up to the World War II Holocaust; the building, a postmodern structure in glass and concrete, was designed by Finnish architects Rainer Mahlamäki and Ilmari Lahdelma. The idea for creating a major new museum in Warsaw dedicated to the history of Polish Jews was initiated in 1995 by the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland. In the same year, the Warsaw City Council allocated the land for this purpose in Muranów, Warsaw’s prewar Jewish quarter and site of the former Warsaw Ghetto, facing the Monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes.
In 2005, the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland established a private-public partnership with the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the City of Warsaw. The Museum's first director was Jerzy Halbersztadt. In September 2006, a specially designed tent called Ohel was erected for exhibitions and events at site of the museum's future location. An international architectural competition to design the building was launched in 2005, supported by a grant from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. On June 30, 2005, the winner was announced by the jury as the team of two Finnish architects, Rainer Mahlamäki and Ilmari Lahdelma. On June 30, 2009, construction of the building was inaugurated; the project was completed in 33 months at a cost of 150 million zloty allocated by the Ministry and the City, with a total cost of 320 million zloty. It is financially supported by annual funds from the Polish Ministry of Culture and Warsaw City Council; the building opened and the museum began its educational and cultural programs on April 19, 2013, on the 70th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
During the 18 months that followed, more than 180,000 visitors toured the building, visited the first temporary exhibitions, took part in cultural and educational programs and events, including film screenings, workshops, performances and lectures. The Grand Opening, with the completed Core Exhibition, took place on October 28, 2014; the Core Exhibition documents and celebrates the thousand-year history of the Jewish community in Poland, decimated by the Holocaust. In 2016 the museum won the European Museum of the Year Award from the European Museum Forum; the Museum faces the memorial commemorating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943. The winner of the architectural competition was Rainer Mahlamäki, of the architectural studio'Lahdelma & Mahlamäki Oy in Helsinki, whose design was chosen from 100 submissions to the international architectural competition; the Polish firm Kuryłowicz & Associates was responsible for construction. The building's minimalist exterior is clad with copper mesh. Silk screened on the glass is the word Polin, in Hebrew letters.
The central feature of the building is its cavernous entrance hall. The main hall forms a undulating wall; the empty space is a symbol of cracks in the history of Polish Jews. Similar in shape to gorge, which could be a reference to the crossing of the Red Sea known from the Exodus; the museum is nearly 13,000 square meters of usable space. At the lowest level, in the basement of the building will be placed a main exhibition about history of Jews from the Middle Ages to modern times; the museum building has a multipurpose auditorium with 480 seats, temporary exhibition rooms, education center, information center, play room for children, café, in the future kosher restaurant. Since the museum presents the whole history of Jews in Poland, not only the period under German occupation, the designer wanted to avoid similarities to existing Holocaust museums which had austere concrete structures; the architects kept the museum in the colors of sand. In 2008, the design of the museum was awarded the Chicago Athenaeum International Architecture Award.
In 2014, the designer Rainer Mahlamäki was awarded the Finlandia Prize for Architecture for his design of the museum. The Core Exhibition's academic team consists of Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett of New York University, Hanna Zaremska of the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Adam Teller of Brown University, Igor Kąkolewski of the University of Warmia and Mazury, Marcin Wodziński of the University of Wrocław, Samuel Kassow of Trinity College, Barbara Engelking and Jacek Leociak of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research at the Polish Academy of Sciences, Helena Datner of the Jewish Historical Institute, Stanisław Krajewski of Warsaw University. Antony Polonsky of Brandeis University is the Core Exhibition's chief historian. American Friends of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews is a U. S. based non-profit organization supporting the foundation of the Museum. On June 17, 2009 the museum launched the Virtual Shtetl portal, which collects and provides access to essential information about Jewish life in Poland before and after the Holocaust in Poland.
The portal now features more than 1,240 towns with maps and image galleries based in large measure on material provided by local history enthusiasts and former residents of those places. The core exhibition occupies more than 4,000 square metres of space, it consists
Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)
The occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II began with the German-Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939, it was formally concluded with the defeat of Germany by the Allies in May 1945. Throughout the entire course of the foreign occupation, the territory of Poland was divided between Germany and the Soviet Union with the intention of eradicating Polish culture and subjugating its people by occupying German and Soviet powers. In summer-autumn of 1941 the lands annexed by the Soviets were overrun by Germany in the course of the successful German attack on the USSR. After a few years of fighting, the Red Army drove the German forces out of the USSR and across Poland from the rest of Central and Eastern Europe. Both occupying powers were hostile to the existence of sovereign Poland, Polish people, the Polish culture aiming at their destruction. Before Operation Barbarossa and the Soviet Union coordinated their Poland-related policies, most visibly in the four Gestapo–NKVD conferences, where the occupants discussed plans for dealing with the Polish resistance movement and future destruction of Poland.
About 6 million Polish citizens—nearly 21.4% of Poland's population—died between 1939 and 1945 as a result of the occupation, half of whom were Polish Jews. Over 90% of the death toll came through non-military losses, as most of the civilians were targeted by various deliberate actions by Germans and the Soviets. Overall, during German occupation of pre-war Polish territory, 1939–1945, the Germans murdered 5,470,000–5,670,000 Poles, including nearly 3,000,000 Jews. In September 1939 Poland was invaded and occupied by two powers: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, acting in accordance with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Germany acquired 48.4% of the former Polish territory. Under the terms of two decrees by Hitler, with Stalin's agreement, large areas of western Poland were annexed by Germany; the size of these annexed territories was 92,500 square kilometres with 10.5 million inhabitants. The remaining block of territory was placed under a German administration, of about the same size and inhabited by about 11.5 millions, were called the General Government, with its capital at Kraków.
A German lawyer and prominent Nazi, Hans Frank, was appointed Governor-General of this occupied area on 12 October 1939. Most of the administration outside local level was replaced by German officials. Non-German population on the occupied lands were subject to forced resettlement, economic exploitation, slow but progressive extermination. A small strip of land, about 700 square kilometres with 200,000 inhabitants, part of Czechoslovakia before 1938 was returned by Germany to its ally, Slovakia. After Germany and the Soviet Union had partitioned Poland in 1939, most of the ethnically Polish territory ended up under the control of Germany, while the areas annexed by the Soviet Union contained ethnically diverse peoples, with the territory split into bilingual provinces, some of which had large ethnic Ukrainian and Belarusian minorities. Many of them welcomed the Soviets due in part to communist agitation by Soviet emissaries. Nonetheless Poles comprised the largest single ethnic group in all territories annexed by the Soviet Union.
By the end of the invasion the Soviet Union had taken over 51.6% of the territory of Poland, with over 13,200,000 people. The ethnic composition of these areas were as follows: 38% Poles, 37% Ukrainians, 14.5% Belarusians, 8.4% Jews, 0.9% Russians and 0.6% Germans. There were 336,000 refugees who fled from areas occupied by Germany, most of them Jews. All territory invaded by the Red Army was annexed to the Soviet Union, split between the Belarusian SSR and the Ukrainian SSR, with the exception of the Wilno area taken from Poland, transferred to sovereign Lithuania for several months and subsequently annexed by the Soviet Union in the form of the Lithuanian SSR on August 3, 1940. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, most of the Polish territories annexed by the Soviets were attached to the enlarged General Government. Following the end of the war, the borders of Poland were shifted westwards. For months prior to the beginning of World War II in 1939, German newspapers and leaders had carried out a national and international propaganda campaign accusing Polish authorities of organizing or tolerating violent ethnic cleansing of ethnic Germans living in Poland.
British ambassador Sir H. Kennard sent four statements in August 1939 to Viscount Halifax regarding Hitler's claims about the treatment Germans were receiving in Poland. From the beginning, the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany was intended as fulfilment of the future plan of the German Reich described by Adolf Hitler in his book Mein Kampf as Lebensraum for the Germans in Central and Eastern Europe; the occupation goal was to turn former Poland into ethnically German "living space", by deporting and exterminating the non-German populace, or relegating it to the position of slave labour. The goal of the German state under Nazi leadership during the war was to destroy the Polish peoples and nation and their fate, as well as many other Slavs, was outlined in genocidal Generalplan Ost and a related Generalsiedlungsplan. Over 30 years 12.5 million Germans were to be resettled into the Slavic are
Zakopane is a town in the extreme south of Poland, in the southern part of the Podhale region at the foot of the Tatra Mountains. From 1975 to 1998 it was part of Nowy Sącz Province; as of 2017 its population was 27,266. Zakopane is a center of Goral culture and is referred to as "the winter capital of Poland”, it is a popular destination for mountaineering and tourism. Zakopane lies near Poland's border with Slovakia, in a valley between the Tatra Mountains and Gubałówka Hill, it can be reached by bus from the province capital, Kraków, about two hours away. Zakopane lies 800–1,000 meters above sea level and centers on the intersection of its Krupówki and Kościuszko Streets; the earliest documents mentioning Zakopane date to the 17th century, describing a glade called Zakopisko. In 1676 it was a village of 43 inhabitants. In 1818 Zakopane was a small town, still being developed. There were only 340 homes; the population of Zakopane at that time was 1,805. 934 women and 871 men lived in Zakopane. The first church was built by Józef Stolarczyk.
Zakopane became a center for the region's metallurgy industries. It expanded during the 19th century. By 1889 it had developed from a small village into a climatic health resort. Rail service to Zakopane began October 1, 1899. In the late 1800s Zakopane constructed a road that went to the town of Nowy Targ, railways that came from Chabówka; because of easier transportation the population of Zakopane had increased to about 3,000 people by the end of the 1900s. In the 19th century, the Krupówki street was just a narrow beaten path, meant for people to get from the central part of town to Kuźnice; the ski jump on Wielka Krokiew was opened in 1925. The cable car to Kasprowy Wierch was completed in 1936; the funicular connected Zakopane and the top of Gubałówka in 1938. Because of Zakopane's popular ski mountains, the town gained popularity this made the number of tourists increase to about 60,000 people by 1930. In March 1940, representatives of the Soviet NKVD and the Nazi Gestapo met for one week in Zakopane's Villa Tadeusz, to coordinate the pacification of resistance in Poland.
Throughout World War II, Zakopane served as an underground staging point between Hungary. From 1942 to 1943, 1,000 prisoners from the German Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp were set to work in a stone quarry; the Zakopane Style of Architecture is an architectural mode inspired by the regional art of Poland’s highland region known as Podhale. Drawing on the motifs and traditions in the buildings of the Carpathian Mountains, the style was pioneered by Stanislaw Witkiewicz and is now considered a core tradition of the Goral people; the Tatras are a popular destination among hikers, ski-tourers and climbers. There is a network of well marked hiking trails in the Tatras and according to the national park regulations the hikers must stick to them. Most of these trails are overcrowded in the summer season; the High Tatras offer excellent opportunities for climbing. In summer and snow are both potential hazards for climbers, the weather can change quickly. Thunderstorms are common in the afternoons. In winter the snow can be up to several meters deep.
In the winter, thousands arrive in Zakopane to ski around Christmas and in February. The most popular skiing areas are Kasprowy Gubałówka. There are a number of cross country skiing trails in the forests surrounding the town. Zakopane hosted the Nordic World Ski Championships in 1929, 1939, 1962, it hosted the Alpine World Ski Championships in 1939, the first outside the Alps and the last official world championships prior to World War II. Zakopane made unsuccessful bids to host the 2006 Winter Olympics and the 2011 and 2013 Alpine World Ski Championships. Zakopane is visited by over 2,500,000 tourists a year. In the winter, Zakopanes tourists are interested in winter sports activities such as skiing, ski jumping, sleigh rides, snowshoe walks, Ice skating. During the summer, Tourists come to do activities like hiking, climbing and horse ride the Tatras mountain, there are many trails in the Tatras. Tourists ride quads and dirt bikes. Swimming and boat rides on the Dunajec river is popular. Many come to experience Goral culture, rich in its unique styles of food, architecture and costume.
Zakopane is popular during the winter holidays, which are celebrated in traditional style, with dances, decorated horse-pulled sleighs called kuligs and roast lamb. A popular tourist activity is taking a stroll through the town's most popular street: Krupówki, it is lined with stores, carnival rides, performers. During the winter and summer seasons, Krupówki Street is crowded with tourists visiting the shops and restaurants. In the summer, a local market along Krupówki Street offers traditional Goral apparel, leather jackets, fur coats and purses. Venders sell foods like the famous oscypek smoked sheep cheese, fruit and meats. There are many stands with Zakopane souvenirs. Zakopane is popular for night life. At night there are always people walking around town checking out the different bars and dance clubs. Most of these bars and dance clubs are located on the Krupowki street; these are the bars that are located in Zakopane: Paparazzi, Cafe Piano, Anemone, Cafe Antrakt, Winoteka
Righteous Among the Nations
Righteous Among the Nations is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis. The term originates with the concept of "righteous gentiles", a term used in rabbinic Judaism to refer to non-Jews, called ger toshav, who abide by the Seven Laws of Noah; when Yad Vashem, the Shoah Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, was established in 1953 by the Knesset, one of its tasks was to commemorate the "Righteous Among the Nations". The Righteous were defined as non-Jews. Since 1963, a commission headed by a justice of the Supreme Court of Israel has been charged with the duty of awarding the honorary title "Righteous Among the Nations". Guided in its work by certain criteria, the commission meticulously studies all documentation including evidence by survivors and other eyewitnesses, evaluates the historical circumstances and the element of risk to the rescuer, decides if the case meets the criteria.
Those criteria are: Only a Jewish party can put a nomination forward Helping a family member, or helping a Jew who converted to Christianity is not a criterion for recognition. It has been given to royalty such as Princess Alice of Battenberg, Queen Mother Helen of Romania and Queen Elisabeth of Belgium but to others like the philosopher Jacques Ellul and to Amsterdam department store employee Hendrika Gerritsen. A person, recognized as Righteous for having taken risks to help Jews during the Holocaust is awarded a medal in their name, a certificate of honor, the privilege of having the name added to those on the Wall of Honor in the Garden of the Righteous at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem; the awards are distributed to the rescuers or their next-of-kin during ceremonies in Israel, or in their countries of residence through the offices of Israel's diplomatic representatives. These ceremonies are given wide media coverage; the Yad Vashem Law authorizes Yad Vashem "to confer honorary citizenship upon the Righteous Among the Nations, if they have died, the commemorative citizenship of the State of Israel, in recognition of their actions".
Anyone, recognized as "Righteous" is entitled to apply to Yad Vashem for the certificate. If the person is no longer alive, their next of kin is entitled to request that commemorative citizenship be conferred on the Righteous who has died. In total, 26,973 men and women from 51 countries have been recognized, amounting to more than 10,000 authenticated rescue stories. Yad Vashem's policy is to pursue the program for as long as petitions for this title are received and are supported by evidence that meets the criteria. Recipients who choose to live in the State of Israel are entitled to a pension equal to the average national wage and free health care, as well as assistance with housing and nursing care. At least 130 Righteous Gentiles have settled in Israel, they were welcomed by Israeli authorities, were granted citizenship. In the mid-1980s, they became entitled to special pensions; some of them settled in British Mandatory Palestine before Israel's establishment shortly after World War II, or in the early years of the new state of Israel, while others came later.
Those who came earlier spoke fluent Hebrew and have integrated into Israeli society. The Righteous are honored with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church in the United States on 16 July. A Righteous from Italy, Edward Focherini, was beatified by the Catholic Church on 15 June 2013. In 2015, Lithuania's first street sign honoring a Righteous Among the Nations was unveiled in Vilnius; the street is named Simaites Street, after Ona Šimaitė, a Vilnius University librarian who helped and rescued Jewish people in the Vilna Ghetto. As of June 16, 2017, the award has been made to 26,513 people. European Day of the Righteous Individuals and groups assisting Jews during the Holocaust List of Righteous Among the Nations by country Righteousness Virtuous pagan Żegota The Heart Has Reasons: Holocaust Rescuers and Their Stories of Courage, Mark Klempner, ISBN 0-8298-1699-2, The Pilgrim Press. Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust: Genocide and Moral Obligation, David P. Gushee, ISBN 1-55778-821-9, Paragon House Publishers.
The Lexicon of the Righteous Among the Nations, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem.. To Save a Life: Stories of Holocaust Rescue, Land-Weber, Ellen, ISBN 0-252-02515-6, University of Illinois Press; the Seven Laws of Noah, Aaron, New York: The Rabbi Jacob Joseph School Press, 1981, ASIN B00071QH6S. The Image of the Non-Jew in Judaism, David, ISBN 0-88946-975-X, New York and Toronto: Edwin Mellen Press, 1983; the Path of the Righteous: Gentile Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust, Mordecai, ISBN 0-88125-376-6, KTAV Publishing House, Inc. Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands, Robert Satloff, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, ISBN 1-58648-399-4; when Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland, Nechama, ISBN 0-19-505194-7, Oxford University Press. Zegota: The Council to Aid Jews in Occupied Poland 1942-1945, Irene & Werbowski, Tecia, ISBN 1-896881-15-7, Price-Patterso
Belgium the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Western Europe. It is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to the southwest, the North Sea to the northwest, it has a population of more than 11.4 million. The capital and largest city is Brussels; the sovereign state is a federal constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary system. Its institutional organisation is structured on both regional and linguistic grounds, it is divided into three autonomous regions: Flanders in the north, Wallonia in the south, the Brussels-Capital Region. Brussels is the smallest and most densely populated region, as well as the richest region in terms of GDP per capita. Belgium is home to two main linguistic groups or Communities: the Dutch-speaking Flemish Community, which constitutes about 59 percent of the population, the French-speaking Community, which comprises about 40 percent of all Belgians. A small German-speaking Community, numbering around one percent, exists in the East Cantons.
The Brussels-Capital Region is bilingual, although French is the dominant language. Belgium's linguistic diversity and related political conflicts are reflected in its political history and complex system of governance, made up of six different governments. Belgium was part of an area known as the Low Countries, a somewhat larger region than the current Benelux group of states that included parts of northern France and western Germany, its name is derived after the Roman province of Gallia Belgica. From the end of the Middle Ages until the 17th century, the area of Belgium was a prosperous and cosmopolitan centre of commerce and culture. Between the 16th and early 19th centuries, Belgium served as the battleground between many European powers, earning the moniker the "Battlefield of Europe", a reputation strengthened by both world wars; the country emerged in 1830 following the Belgian Revolution. Belgium participated in the Industrial Revolution and, during the course of the 20th century, possessed a number of colonies in Africa.
The second half of the 20th century was marked by rising tensions between the Dutch-speaking and the French-speaking citizens fueled by differences in language and culture and the unequal economic development of Flanders and Wallonia. This continuing antagonism has led to several far-reaching reforms, resulting in a transition from a unitary to a federal arrangement during the period from 1970 to 1993. Despite the reforms, tensions between the groups have remained, if not increased. Unemployment in Wallonia is more than double that of Flanders. Belgium is one of the six founding countries of the European Union and hosts the official seats of the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, the European Council, as well as a seat of the European Parliament in the country's capital, Brussels. Belgium is a founding member of the Eurozone, NATO, OECD, WTO, a part of the trilateral Benelux Union and the Schengen Area. Brussels hosts several of the EU's official seats as well as the headquarters of many major international organizations such as NATO.
Belgium is a developed country, with an advanced high-income economy. It has high standards of living, quality of life, education, is categorized as "very high" in the Human Development Index, it ranks as one of the safest or most peaceful countries in the world. The name "Belgium" is derived from Gallia Belgica, a Roman province in the northernmost part of Gaul that before Roman invasion in 100 BC, was inhabited by the Belgae, a mix of Celtic and Germanic peoples. A gradual immigration by Germanic Frankish tribes during the 5th century brought the area under the rule of the Merovingian kings. A gradual shift of power during the 8th century led the kingdom of the Franks to evolve into the Carolingian Empire; the Treaty of Verdun in 843 divided the region into Middle and West Francia and therefore into a set of more or less independent fiefdoms which, during the Middle Ages, were vassals either of the King of France or of the Holy Roman Emperor. Many of these fiefdoms were united in the Burgundian Netherlands of the 15th centuries.
Emperor Charles V extended the personal union of the Seventeen Provinces in the 1540s, making it far more than a personal union by the Pragmatic Sanction of 1549 and increased his influence over the Prince-Bishopric of Liège. The Eighty Years' War divided the Low Countries into the northern United Provinces and the Southern Netherlands; the latter were ruled successively by the Spanish and the Austrian Habsburgs and comprised most of modern Belgium. This was the theatre of most Franco-Spanish and Franco-Austrian wars during the 17th and 18th centuries. Following the campaigns of 1794 in the French Revolutionary Wars, the Low Countries—including territories that were never nominally under Habsburg rule, such as the Prince-Bishopric of Liège—were annexed by the French First Republic, ending Austrian rule in the region; the reunification of the Low Countries as the United Kingdom of the Netherlands occurred at the dissolution of the First French Empire in 1815, after the defeat of Napo
The guinea pig or domestic guinea pig known as cavy or domestic cavy, is a species of rodent belonging to the family Caviidae and the genus Cavia. Despite their common name, guinea pigs are not native to Guinea, nor are they biologically related to pigs, the origin of the name is still unclear, they originated in the Andes of South America, studies based on biochemistry and hybridization suggest they are domesticated descendants of a related species of cavy such as C. tschudii, therefore do not exist in the wild. In Western society, the domestic guinea pig has enjoyed widespread popularity as a household pet, a type of pocket pet, since its introduction by European traders in the 16th century, their docile nature, friendly responsiveness to handling and feeding, the relative ease of caring for them have made and continue to make guinea pigs a popular choice of pet. Organizations devoted to the competitive breeding of guinea pigs have been formed worldwide, many specialized breeds with varying coat colors and textures are selected by breeders.
The domestic guinea pig plays an important role in folk culture for many indigenous Andean groups as a food source, but in folk medicine and in community religious ceremonies. The animals are used for meat and are a culinary staple in the Andes Mountains, where they are known as cuy. A modern breeding program was started in the 1960s in Peru that resulted in large breeds known as cuy mejorados and prompted efforts to increase consumption of the animal outside South America. Biological experimentation on domestic guinea pigs has been carried out since the 17th century; the animals were so used as model organisms in the 19th and 20th centuries that the epithet guinea pig came into use to describe a human test subject. Since that time, they have been replaced by other rodents such as mice and rats. However, they are still used in research as models for human medical conditions such as juvenile diabetes, tuberculosis and pregnancy complications; the scientific name of the common species is Cavia porcellus, with porcellus being Latin for "little pig".
Cavia is New Latin. Cabiai may be an adaptation of the Portuguese çavia, itself derived from the Tupi word saujá, meaning rat. Guinea pigs are called quwi or jaca in Quechua and cuy or cuyo in the Spanish of Ecuador and Bolivia. Breeders tend to use the more formal "cavy" to describe the animal, while in scientific and laboratory contexts, it is far more referred to by the more colloquial "guinea pig". How the animals came to be called "pigs" is not clear, they are built somewhat like pigs, with large heads relative to their bodies, stout necks, rounded rumps with no tail of any consequence. They can survive for long periods in small quarters, like a'pig pen', were thus transported on ships to Europe; the animal's name alludes to pigs in many European languages. The German word for them is Meerschweinchen "little sea pig", translated into Polish as świnka morska, into Hungarian as tengerimalac, into Russian as морская свинка; this derives from the Middle High German name merswin. This meant "dolphin" and was used because of the animals' grunting sounds.
Many other less scientifically based explanations of the German name exist. For example, sailing ships stopping to reprovision in the New World would pick up stores of guinea pigs, which provided an transportable source of fresh meat; the French term is cochon cobaye. This is not universal; the Chinese refer to them as 豚鼠, sometimes as Netherlands pig or Indian mouse. The Japanese word for guinea pig is "モルモット", which derives from the name of another mountain-dwelling rodent, the marmot; the other Japanese word for guinea pig, using kanji, is tenjiku-nezumi, which translates as India rat. The origin of "guinea" in "guinea pig" is harder to explain. One proposed explanation is that the animals were brought to Europe by way of Guinea, leading people to think they had originated there. "Guinea" was frequently used in English to refer to any far-off, unknown country, so the name may be a colorful reference to the animal's exotic appeal. Another hypothesis suggests the "guinea" in the name is a corruption of "Guiana", an area in South America.
A common misconception is that they were so named because they were sold for the price of a guinea coin. Others believe; the guinea pig was first domesticated as early as 5000 BC for food by tribes in the Andean region of South America (the present-day sout