News

Members of the International Council of Christians and Jews visited the Auschwitz Memorial for the first time in the history of the organization. On July 5, the group of more than a hundred people from 27 countries walked the Remembrance Trail on the grounds of the German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp Auschwitz II-Birkenau, which was marked by four symbolic stations. The visit to the Memorial was part of the three-day Council meeting, held in Cracow this year under the title Religion and Ideology: Polish Perspectives on the Future.

The first International Summer Academy: History, Remembrance, and Education concluded at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. More than twenty participants of various ages and occupations from around the world took part in the project.

On July 27-30, at the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust and at the International Youth Meeting Center, a conference was held, entitled, “Faces of Justice: The world against the Holocaust and Other Crimes of Genocide in the Twentieth Century”.

From July 2011, the Italian exhibition at the Auschwitz Memorial is closed to visitors. Not educational in any way, it failed to meet the basic requirements for national exhibitions as set by the International Auschwitz Council, which have been in force since the 1990s.

The educational project “Auschwitz in Literature” has come to an end. Its participants had been the students of the Powiatowy Zespoł Szkół Ekonomiczno-Gastronomicznych [The County Economic and Gastronomical Schools] Number 4 in Oświęcim.

We once again handed over the pages of this monthly to the young participants of the international project Memory and Commemoration in the Era of Web 2.0. In the February issue we published articles that came to be during workshops held in Oświęcim. The second part of the project was held in March at the former Buchenwald Concentration Camp in Germany. The group effort, in the form of articles, written under the supervision of the chief editor of Oś, can be found on the following pages.