Residents of Krakow are bracing themselves for one of the city's biggest summer festivals, the Jewish Culture Festival, which runs from June 25 through July 3.

For a whole week, the Polish city pulsates with Jewish life, from cantorial, klezmer and Jewish music to Yiddish cabaret and workshops on Jewish song and dance. There are also lectures on Jewish philosophy and tradition, old Yiddish movies, films with more contemporary Jewish themes, and even demonstrations of Jewish cooking.

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The festival, one of the largest and most diverse Jewish cultural events in the world, was inaugurated in 1988 by Janusz Makuch. Makuch, a non-Jew who had heard from an elderly man about Jewish Krakow before the war, was inspired to try to recreate something of that lost past. Since the festival's inauguration, Makuch has traveled the Jewish world to find entertainers, lecturers and suitable films and plays.