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The President of India, Pratibha Devisingh Patil, visited the Auschwitz Museum and Memorial on April 26. She viewed Oświęcim-Auschwitz, the archival film footage shot by Soviet cameramen immediately after liberation. She also saw the crematorium and gas chamber building and block 11, which housed the camp jail. President Patil placed a floral tribute at the Death Wall in the courtyard of that block and paid homage to the people murdered there.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation has been registered and has begun operations. On April 29 during a special conference held at the Chancellery of the Prime Minister, its founder, Władysław Bartoszewski, presented its structure and the persons to whom this work has been entrusted. The director of the Museum, Dr Piotr M.A. Cywiński, who is the President of the new Foundation Management Board also took part in the conference.

The United Kingdom will join the project to maintain the grounds and buildings at the former Nazi German concentration and death camp, Auschwitz. — The Polish Prime Minister has outlined to me the steps that he wishes to take to make sure the permanence of that Memorial at Auschwitz. I was able to tell him today that we will join other countries in supporting the maintenance and retention on a permanent basis — said British Prime Minister Gordon Brown after a morning meeting in Warsaw with Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

The State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oświęcim and the Pedagogical University of Cracow announce the recruitment for the Second Stage Master’s Degree “Resettlement — Totalitarianism — The Holocaust”. This is the first such specialization at any Polish university.

About 6 thousand young Jews from 55 countries around the world and about a thousand Poles joined in the March of the Living, in tribute to and commemoration of the victims of the Holocaust, on Tuesday. As is the tradition, the March of the Living started at the gate of the Auschwitz I site, with its inscription Arbeit macht frei (“work will set you free”).

Representatives from the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam visited the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau on April 20-22, 2009. The delegation visited the Museum in order to establish closer cooperation with the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust.