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Jan. 3, Bielsko-Biała (PAP) – A team representing the Polish episcopate, the internal affairs and administration ministry, and the police visited Wadowice and the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum on Tuesday. Both places may figure in the itinerary during Pope Benedict XVI’s May pilgrimage to Poland.

Almost a million people visited the grounds, buildings, and exhibitions of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in 2005. Attendance had fluctuated between 500-700 thousand annually in the previous few years. The number of visitors in 2005 was the highest since 1972.

The program marked the 60th anniversary, on January 27, 2005, of the liberation of Auschwitz. In homage to the millions of victims of Nazi terror, the Museum agreed for the first time to the filming at the Auschwitz site of performances by internationally renowned musicians.

The five-volume Księga Pamięci. Transporty Polaków do KL Auschwitz z Radomia i innych miejscowości Kielecczyzny 1940-1944 [Memorial Book: Transports of Poles to Auschwitz Concentration Camp from Radom and Other Localities in the Kielce Region, 1940-1944] has been published.

At a time when the whole world is condemning the Iranian president’s anti-Semitic remarks, the head of the largest opposition group in Egypt has said that the Holocaust is a myth invented by Jews. The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the second largest party in the Egyptian parliament, repeated the words of the Iranian president, who called the Holocaust into doubt. “Western democracies attack anyone who does not share their Zionist version of the Holocaust, which is only a myth, after all,” said Muhammed Akef....

The five Christmas Eves behind the barbed wire of the Auschwitz German camp were rich in tragic events. Nevertheless, despite the threat of punishment, prisoners observed Christmas Eve. People who experienced the hell of Auschwitz will always remember those events.