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The Light of Remembrance award for outstanding contribution in the education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust was awarded to Krystyna Oleksy, the outgoing deput director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in charge of education and head of the International Centre for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust. The statuette, a new award established by the director of the Museum, was presented during a ceremonial farewell which finalised her 37 years of work at the Memorial Site.

Kazimierz Smoleń, a former prisoner of Auschwitz, co-founder and long-time director of Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, died on the 27th of January in Oświęcim. He passed away at the age of 91, on the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi German Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp.

The 27th of January 2012 is the 67th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi German Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp. This year, we are also commemorating the 70th anniversary of commencement of the mass extermination of Jews in the Birkenau gas chambers. During this year’s anniversary ceremony, a unique relic was presented: the only preserved door to a gas chamber, deriving from one of the crematoriums, blown up by SS members at the end of the final evacuation of the camp.

“To postwar Europe, Auschwitz became a permanent reference point that fully justifies the entire postwar effort at creating a different Europe that is new, more human, and sensitive. Today, when there is so much talk about the crisis of Europe, it is worth remembering this.” These are the words that we can read in the report of the Auschwitz Memorial for the year 2011. 72 pages of a colourful Polish-English publication present information about the most important events of 2011. DOWNLOAD PDF...

The 22nd meeting of the International Auschwitz Council was held at the Chancellery of the Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland. The session was attended by Prime Minister Donald Tusk and the Deputy Minister of Culture and National Heritage Małgorzata Omilanowska and was presided over by Professor Władysław Bartoszewski. This was the last meeting of the second term IAC.

Meeting witnesses to history, former prisoners of Auschwitz, are of course for obvious reasons popular events, as can be seen on the cover of Oś. The guests of the November Educational Session of the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust, which drew around 300 participants, teachers and their students, were: Zofia Posmysz, Prof. Wacław Długoborski, as well as Juliusz Zon. In this edition, we publish excerpts of their reminiscences.