IAC Meetings

The International Auschwitz Council held its 14th session at the Center for Dialogue and Prayer in Oświęcim on July 4-5. Director Piotr M. A. Cywiński opened the meeting with a report on the operations of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum from January to June 2007.

During a session in Warsaw on December 5, 2006, the International Auschwitz Council approved plans submitted by the new director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Piotr M. A. Cywiński. The Council unanimously passed a resolution expressing its satisfaction at the idea of creating a new main exhibition at the Museum, in the last row of buildings at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp site, while also maintaining and preserving the original camp relics. Details of the changes will be discussed with both the Council and other groups and institutions in Poland and abroad.

This council is international because memory, too, must be international. It must be a memory that belongs to all of us," said Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz during ceremonies marking the nomination of members of the International Auschwitz Council.

Polish prime minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz attended the final session during the present term of office of the International Auschwitz Council on February 27, 2006. The meeting covered ongoing affairs at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and a summing-up of the Council’s six-year tenure. Marcinkiewicz thanked the current members and presented them with diplomas to mark their membership.

The session was devoted primarily to the question of the educational programmes of the International Centre of Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust, which is presently being formed.

The International Auschwitz Council considered an outline of the plans to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the prisoners of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, which falls on 27 January 2005, and with the state of preparations for this.