News

Freshmen at the Oswiecim State Higher Vocational School are doing three-week internships at the Museum. OSHVS teacher Jacek Urbiński said that all the students must do an internship, regardless of what they're studying. "The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum is very popular and most of the students ask to go there. An internship at the Museum is always a valuable and interesting experience, and the cooperation between our institutions has gotten off to a good start.".

“Jehova’s witnesses in KL Auschwitz. Imprisoned for Their Faith” is the first attempt at a thorough study of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Auschwitz. Although gaps in the records make it impossible to specify exactly how many Witnesses the Nazis held in Auschwitz, this study concludes, on the basis of painstaking investigations, that the number ranged from several dozen to well over a hundred prisoners at various times, and that a total of at least 387 witnesses were incarcerated in Auschwitz during the almost five years the camp functioned.

The French Foundation for the Remembrance of the Shoah (FMS) has assigned 130 thousand euro for landscaping at the so-called Alte Judenrampe, the railroad tracks between the sites of the Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II camps, where trains full of people sent to Auschwitz by the Nazi Germans arrived from 1942 to 1944.

The Roma People Association and Roma Historical Institute invite to the ceremonial commemorations of the 62 anniversary of liquidation of “Zigeunerlager” (Roma Camp) which take place on the August 2nd, 2006 at the former Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp.

July 18, Bielsko-Biała (PAP—Polish Press Agency) – A new parking lot is planned for the Auschwitz II-Birkenau Concentration Camp site. Oświęcim village commune wójt Andrzej Bibrzycki announced on Tuesday that the plan is aimed, above all, at diverting traffic from the immediate vicinity of the Museum. The existing parking lot directly adjacent to the historical main gate of the Birkenau site will be closed once the new lot is finished.

July 17, Oświęcim (PAP-Polish Press Agency) – A watercolor by Władysław Siwek (number 5826), a former prisoner of the German Auschwitz camp, has been added to the collections of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Collections Department head Igor Bartosik told PAP on Monday. The watercolor is a sketch for a painting depicting the digging of the foundations for Block no. 15; the final version of the painting is already part of the Museum collections.