Jewish museum’s design chosen

An austere Nordic design in glass and limestone was chosen Thursday for Warsaw’s new Jewish museum -- a rectangular building with a jagged passageway.

The Museum of the History of Polish Jews, due to open in 2008, will depict Jewish life, which flourished for eight centuries in Poland before it was virtually wiped out under Nazi occupation.

Finnish architects Rainer Mahlamaki and Ilmari Lahdelma’s firm beat out better-known competitors such as Daniel Libeskind, designer of Berlin’s landmark Jewish Museum, and Peter Eisenman, designer of the Berlin Holocaust memorial.