News

In June, the Jewish Center hosted FASPE project participants, on which we reported in the previous issue of the monthly. Among them were young journalists as well as students from the Columbia University in New York. In this issue of Oś, we are publishing their texts, which were the effect of the ten-day program.

Poland is supporting the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation Perpetual Fund with a grant of €10 million. All the parties in the Polish parliament lent their support to a special bill which on 5 October was signed by Bronisław Komorowski, the president of the Polish Republic.

The “European pack for visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum” — an English language publication for teachers and educators who are planning a visit to the Auschwitz Memorial Site, has been made available electronically on the Auschwitz Museum internet site.

A million people have visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum between January and the early days of September 2011. A record number of 1,400,000 people visited the grounds of the former German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp Auschwitz during the whole of 2010. There are many indications that the record will be broken this year. The Auschwitz Memorial has the highest visitor numbers of any Museum in Poland.

The first trial of the mass killing of prisoners with the use of Zyklon-B in the Auschwitz camp probably began seventy years ago, on September 3, 1941, when 850 prisoners were killed. Immediately after evening roll call, the Germans locked about 600 Soviet POWs and 250 sick Polish prisoners selected from the camp hospital in 28 cells in the cellar of block 11 (then block 13). Ten prisoners from the penal company, who had been confined to the jail since September 1 following the escape by a prisoner, were also there.

A permanent Municipal-Museum Cooperative Group has been set up to coordinate joint development. Besides Mayor Janusz Chwierut of the city of Oświęcim and Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum Director Piotr M. A. Cywiński, it includes specialists on investment, promotion, and tourism. The group arose as a joint initiative of the mayor and the Museum director.