News

International Auschwitz Council chairman Professor Władysław Bartoszewski has signed a notarized document establishing the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, intended to amass a Perpetual Fund to cover the conservation of the original camp buildings, grounds, and ruins, and to preserve and securely maintain the archival holdings and other authentic objects.

The award-winning film about the most spectacular escape from Auschwitz is now available for purchase on DVD. Uciekinier [The Escapee] tells the extraordinary life story of Kazimierz Piechowski, former Auschwitz prisoner no. 918, who organized one of the most amazing escapes from the camp.

On January 27, 2009, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum will hold ceremonies marking the 64th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi German Auschwitz camp by the Red Army. This year’s observance, with the theme To Hear Every Word, will be dedicated to the message to the younger generation from the eyewitnesses to history. The focal point of the ceremony will be a meeting with the former prisoners who tell their story to the world.

A work by Auschwitz prisoner Tadeusz Myszkowski is the latest addition to the Museum art collection. It is a caricature of another prisoner, Jan Kowalski, camp number 99. Like Myszkowski, Kowalski came from Zakopane, and the two were related. The Germans arrested the two men in 1939 over caricatures of Hitler and Mussolini—Myszkowski for drawing them, and Kowalski for displaying them in public in the Empire café.

The International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust has published the proceedings of the international conference on Remembrance, Awareness and Responsibility, held last year on the 60th anniversary of the opening of the State Museum at the site of the Nazi Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.

Ombudsmen from all over the world assembled in Oświęcim on December 4. They took part in a session marking the 60th anniversary of the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and International Human Rights Day. The honorary patrons were the President of the Polish Republic, Lech Kaczyński, and the Chairman of the European Commission, Manuel Barroso.