News

About a million people visited the site of the former Nazi German Auschwitz concentration camp last year. Over half of them came from abroad. They could call on almost 200 licensed Museum guides, who work in a total of 16 languages.

A seminar for Roman Catholic priests from Poland was held at the Yad Vashem Memorial Institute in Jerusalem from February 8 – 18. 30 priests attended.

Museum Director Piotr Cywiński met with former Auschwitz prisoners Józef Hordyński and Józef Stós, and veteran Henryk Łagodzki (a soldier in Warsaw Uprising in the battalion commanded by Captain Witold Pilecki), who requested the meeting in the context of plans to erect a Mound of Remembrance and Reconciliation. The Mound is the brainchild of another former Auschwitz prisoner, Professor Józef Szajna.

December 2006 was a special month for Fazhila Jumayeva, an Uzbekistan resident. She finally found out what happened to her brother, Yozi Khaydarov, during the war. All she had known of him for years was that he had gone missing in action in 1941, during fighting on the Eastern Front in World War II.

The Auschwitz Museum has released its Annual Report. The color booklet, over 60 pages long, features information about the most important events of 2006. This is the first time that the Report has appeared in such an attractive form, and that it is aimed at such a broad audience.

Warsaw, February 7 (PAP-Polish Press Agency) – A poster competition on the theme of “The Holocaust—Eternal Memory,” organized by the United Nations Information Center, the Shalom Foundation, and the Polish Ministry of National Education, is intended to foster knowledge about the Holocaust, encourage sensitivity towards others, and promote the humanistic values associated with the struggle against intolerance, xenophobia, discrimination, and racism.