News

During a session in Warsaw on December 5, 2006, the International Auschwitz Council approved plans submitted by the new director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Piotr M. A. Cywiński. The Council unanimously passed a resolution expressing its satisfaction at the idea of creating a new main exhibition at the Museum, in the last row of buildings at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp site, while also maintaining and preserving the original camp relics. Details of the changes will be discussed with both the Council and other groups and institutions in Poland and abroad.

Nov. 5, Jerusalem (PAP-Polish Press Agency) – For two weeks, some 40 teachers from various regions of Poland will attend seminars in Jerusalem, Israel on the history of the Holocaust and the history of the Jews in Poland and Europe. The first session was held at the Yad Vashem Memorial Institute in Jerusalem on Monday. The seminars are a joint effort between Yad Vashem and the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.

The posthumous award of the title "Righteous among the Nations of the World" to Maria Kotarba took place at the Polish embassy in London on October 24, 2006. The Yad Vashem Memorial Institute in Jerusalem bestowed the honor in recognition of the aid she gave to Jews during her imprisonment in concentration camps during the Second World War. Relatives of Maria Kotarba accepted the medal in her name.

The Zen Peacemakers will hold their annual Bearing Witness at the Auschwitz-Birkenau German Nazi concentration camp in Poland - a place of personal and universal human tragedy during World War II.

Oct. 10, Goleszów (PAP-Polish Press Agency) – A memorial chamber dedicated to the prisoners of Golleschau, an Auschwitz sub-camp, was opened on Tuesday at the cultural center in Goleszów, Cieszyń Silesia, Poland. The chamber is complemented by an educational walking trail around the local stone quarry, where prisoners, most of them Jewish, worked under murderous conditions during the war.

For some time now, residents of the housing settlements adjacent to the Museum have been concerned about various expert recommendations connected with the so-called Regulatory Plan for the Grounds and Immediate Surroundings of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp Site as a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Object.