News

The 17th session of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation Council took place at the Memorial on 2 September. The Foundation’s primary mission is to finance the preservation of the authentic remains of the Auschwitz-Birkenau German Nazi concentration and extermination camp. In the past year, the Foundation donated a record amount of over PLN 22 million for conservation works at the Memorial.

"Volunteer Academy" is a new project of the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust at the Auschwitz Memorial aimed at people interested in Auschwitz’s history and volunteering at the Memorial Archives. The Academy will run online from 16 October to 17 November. The meetings will be conducted in English.

Subsequent language versions of the interactive multibook designed to prepare visitors for a visit to the Auschwitz Memorial are available on the Museum website: French, German, Italian, and Spanish.

Eighty-one years ago, the Franciscan friar Maximilian Maria Kolbe was murdered in German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz. On the anniversary of the incident, a mass was celebrated at the Memorial, near Block 11, which housed the camp prison and where the monk was murdered.

Nearly 200 worshippers commemorated the 80th anniversary of the death of Edith Stein at the Auschwitz Memorial on 9 August. They held a prayer march through the grounds of the former German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz II-Birkenau, from the historic death gate to the monument to the victims located between the ruins of the crematoria and gas chambers. Among those gathered were representatives of the episcopates of Poland and Germany, the clergy and the faithful. The event was presided over by Archbishop Marek Jędraszewski, with the Deputy Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Jarosław Sellin, among the guests.

Governor-General of Australia David Hurley, together with his wife Linda, visited the Auschwitz Memorial. They commemorated the victims of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp by laying a wreath by the Death Wall as well as they made their entry in the Memorial Book.