News

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.

July 16, Oświęcim (PAP-Polish Press Agency) – About 200 young people from around Europe covered the 3-kilometer "Road of Death" from the site of the Auschwitz I Main Camp to Auschwitz II-Birkenau on Sunday. The young people, taking part in the "Fraternal Relay," paid tribute to the people murdered in Birkenau by laying red roses on each of the 21 plaques at the monument to the victims at the site. After the ceremony, they set out for Assisi, the birthplace of St. Francis.

The Federal Labor Court announced on Friday, July 7, that the case of restoring veterans' disability benefits to a former guard at the German Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp had not yet been resolved.