News

The publication of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum 'Auschwitz Survivors. Clinical Psychiatric Studies' is available in the Museum's on-line bookshop. This anthology constitutes a selection from over four hundred papers written by staff from the Academy of Medicine in Cracow, dealing with the Nazi-German Occupation and former Polish political prisoners of concentration camps.

On May 30, 2009, the Polish Association for the Maintenance of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Site and the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust at the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau organized a seminar entitled, “The fate of women in Auschwitz”.

Historians from the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum took part in ceremonies marking the 64th anniversary of the liberation of the Mauthausen-Gusen camp complex in Austria. In late April and early May 1945, American soldiers freed more than 60 thousand prisoners there.

Rector Professor Lucjan Suchanek of the State Higher Vocational School (PWSZ) in Oświęcim presented Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Director Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywiński with the letter, written by Auschwitz prisoners, that was recently discovered during the renovation of one of the buildings at the school. The guest of honor on this occasion was former prisoner Wacław Sobczak, whose name appears in the letter, and who was one of the prisoners who bricked up the bottle in an aircraft shelter they were building on September 20, 1944.

The President of India, Pratibha Devisingh Patil, visited the Auschwitz Museum and Memorial on April 26. She viewed Oświęcim-Auschwitz, the archival film footage shot by Soviet cameramen immediately after liberation. She also saw the crematorium and gas chamber building and block 11, which housed the camp jail. President Patil placed a floral tribute at the Death Wall in the courtyard of that block and paid homage to the people murdered there.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation has been registered and has begun operations. On April 29 during a special conference held at the Chancellery of the Prime Minister, its founder, Władysław Bartoszewski, presented its structure and the persons to whom this work has been entrusted. The director of the Museum, Dr Piotr M.A. Cywiński, who is the President of the new Foundation Management Board also took part in the conference.