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Leaders of the great world religions have prayed for peace and paid homage to the victims of Auschwitz. Participants in the International Encounter of Religions for Peace in Cracow toured the site of the camp. The pilgrims passed in silence through the camp gate with its inscription “Arbeit macht frei.” At the Death Wall, they lit candles and observed a minute of silence. The culmination of the event was a ceremony at the International Monument to the Victims of Fascism in Birkenau.

At the site of the Perm-36 Memorial, the only remaining Gulag site in the Russian Federation, the Pilorama 2009 International Forum was held under the slogan “War and Peace: Man and Imprisonment.” An important part of this year’s meeting was the Russian premiere of the Auschwitz Museum’s new traveling exhibition on the history of the Nazi German concentration camp. The Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs extended financial support to the project.

Belgium has joined other countries taking part in the mission of preserving the authentic site and buildings of the former Nazi German Concentration Camp Auschwitz for future generations. This has been made possible by the creation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation at the beginning of this year.

Twenty-five educators from Israel took part in a twelve-day seminar entitled “Auschwitz in the collective memory of Poland and the world. The role and meaning of remembering Auschwitz-Birkenau for Jews and Poles” organized by the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust.

“The Holocaust: Voices of Scholars” is a collection of 24 personal essays-reflections of eminent scholars and experts in research into the history of the Holocaust. Individuals, who for the greater part of their life have researched Extermination, write about their difficulties, questions, and most important points of reflection. They do so on the basis of their own experiences and thoughts, not avoiding criticism as well as creating new visions and demands for the future. The book was edited by Dr Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs, the director of the Holocaust Studies Center at Jagiellonian University in Cracow.

The exhibition Memory Photographs, by former Auschwitz prisoner Marian Kołodziej at the St. Maximilian Kolbe Center in Harmęże, is some of the most moving testimony to the reality of the camp. In Oś you will find an interview with this outstanding painter and stage designer, and our cover features one of his works, a self-portrait of a man who says, “through the line I draw, I remember the thousands of people who died there. This is a form of honoring their memory.” DOWNLOAD PDF FILE...