News

Are there fields of human ashes at the site of the camp? Who maintains the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial? Are the things you see there original? Are there fields of human ashes at the site of the camp? You can find answers to these and other questions in a  new module (in Polish for the time being), devoted to preservation issues at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp site, on the Museum website.

The British National Archive has released the first of five million World War II aerial reconnaissance photographs taken over occupied Europe by the RAF. The photos were placed on a special website, on January 19.

There has been no previous study devoted solely to the Jehovah’s Witnesses in the literature on Auschwitz Concentration Camp. This was partly due to the scarcity of extant documentation on their imprisonment, and the rarity of memoirs or accounts. Additionally, the small number of prisoners in category IBV (Internationale Bibelforscher-Vereinigung—International Association of Holy Scripture Researchers—the rubric used to register Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Nazi camps) meant that they were treated as anonymous members of one more category among the thousands of individuals who made up the prisoner population.

Twenty graduates of the year-long course on Totalitarianism, Nazism, and the Holocaust received their diplomas on Saturday. The classes are held at the Museum under the supervision of the Cracow Pedagogical Academy. The lecturers come from the Museum staff and the Jagiellonian, Warsaw, and Silesian universities. There are 40 students from Poznań, Warsaw, and Cracow enrolled in the course this year.

Tuesday marked the 59th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz Concentration Camp by the Soviet Army. The observances began with a “March of Silence” through the grounds of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum on Monday.

The Municipal Tourist Information Point in Oświęcim has been moved from the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum to the Maja Tourist Service center, several hundred meters away. The decision was taken by Oświęcim mayor Janusz Marszałek.