On May 12, the Polish Institute hosted a unique ceremony of naming the IP Library after Ada and Edmund Neustein – legendary booksellers from Tel Aviv.

The Polish Institute in Tel Aviv, operating since 2000, is a thriving center for the promotion of Polish culture in Israel. By supporting and organizing cultural events, conferences, promoting Polish

literature as well as academic exchanges and projects, the Institute builds bridges between Poland and Israel.

When it was established in 2000, the Institute joined the group of promoters of Polish culture in Israel, next to an important place operating in Tel Aviv at 94, Allenby Street. It was the bookshop

of Edmund and Ada Neustein. It was in tribute to them that the Polish Institute gave its Library the name of the legendary pair of Polish-Israeli booksellers.

The unveiling of the commemorative plaque took place on May 12 as part of the Polish Heritage Days celebrated in Polish foreign missions around the world (under the English name “Polish

Heritage Days”).

Edmund Neustein was born in 1917. He was a bookseller and publisher. After the war, he ran a bookshop, first in Katowice and later in Warsaw.

In 1957, he emigrated to Israel, and a year later, together with his wife Ada, they founded a bookshop and a Polish library in Tel Aviv. Edmund Neustein, called Mundek by his faithful readers and

friends, brought books and magazines from Poland to Israel, as well as Polish emigre magazines. The bookstore also functioned as a place for literary meetings and discussion clubs, where,

among others, Israeli authors writing in Polish promoted their work.

With the influx of Polish Jews emigrating to Israel, the Neustein bookshop turned into a center of the Polish intelligentsia and became one of the largest foreign centers of Polish culture.

Edmund Neustein received many awards for promoting Polish culture in Israel: in 1989, the Polish Culture Foundation award, in 1994 the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and in 1994 the Minister of

Culture.

Edmund Neustein died in 2001. The bookstore was run by his wife Ada for the next three years. It was closed by her death in 2004.

The memory of the Neusteins remains alive in the circles of Polish Jews in Israel. To this day, they return with emotion to the times of the bookstore’s splendor, each time pointing to its huge role

in nurturing Polish culture in Israel. Undoubtedly, the bookstore that functioned as a cultural institution, strengthened a moving sentiment for Poland.