News

The Warsaw Uprising began 66 years ago, on August 1, 1944. The heroic combat lasted for 63 days. At five o’clock on the afternoon of the anniversary of these events—W-Hour, the start of the Uprising—Museum Director Dr. Piotr M.A. Cywiński, a Warsaw native, and Piotr Kadlčik, chairman of the Union of Jewish religious communities in Poland, observed a minute of silence in tribute to the heroes and victims of the Uprising, including Warsaw residents deported to Auschwitz from the transit camp in Pruszków. While the sirens sounded, they placed a wreath at the Death Wall outside block 11.

Twenty five  educators from Israel took part in a twelve day seminarorganized from 18-29 of July by the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust at the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau.

At the beginning of July 2010, the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau and The Cracow University of Economics have signed an agreement for cooperation.

The results of the competition for the architectonic-urban design of the new Visitor Service Center at the Auschwitz Memorial have been announced. The contest aimed at developing a complex solution including a service center, hotel, parking facilities, and the accompanying infrastructure. Thirty submissions arrived by the deadline. The winner was the Cracow firm KKM Kozień Architekci, whose previous designs include the Przemyśl Regional Museum and the Radio Koszalin building.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced in Cracow on Saturday that the United States will support the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation to the amount of $15 million (€12.2 million), bringing pledges to the Foundation to around €80 million—two-thirds of the required total of €120 million—in less than a year and a half since it was established. Clinton flew into Cracow for a meeting to mark the tenth anniversary of the Community of Democracies.

The third Raphael Lemkin Seminar—organized by the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust at the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, The Raphael Lemkin Center for the Prevention of Genocide, and the Holocaust Research Center at the Jagiellonian University—has come to an end.