News

Preparatory work has begun on the adaptation of the Auschwitz kitchen building as a gallery of camp art. The building was not restored after the war and fell into ruin before being thoroughly renovated in 1961-1963. All those years ago, the work was justified on the grounds that “despite the high cost of the renovation, it would be inexcusable for this building to be lost, not only in view of its role in Auschwitz Concentration Camp, but also because it represents a huge exhibition space on one level.” After that renovation, however, the idea remained unrealized. The Museum adapted the building as workshops for carpenters, machinists, sheet-metal workers, and painters, and devoted part of it to facilities for renovation workers from the preservation department. The building has been empty since the opening in 2002 of the new preservation workshops in the visitor reception building.

The year-long course in museum studies at the Jagiellonian University Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology Institute has ended. As has been the case over the several years that the course has been taught, Auschwitz-Museum Birkenau staff members attended. This time, there were eight of them.

The 60th anniversary of the liquidation of the so called family camp in Auschwitz Concentration Camp for Jews deported from the ghetto in Terezin (Theresienstadt, now in the Czech Republic) is being commemorated.

In July, the Auschwitz Museum Education Center began its now-traditional two-week seminar on “Auschwitz in the Collective Awareness in Poland and Abroad.” Participants include staff from Holocaust remembrance institutions in Israel: Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the Ghetto Fighters Museum from the kibbutz of the same name, and Massuah (The Lighthouse) from Tel Itzhak kibbutz.

Museum Chief Preservation Officer Witold Smrek announced plans for the imminent start of work to secure the ruins of gas chambers and crematoria II and III at the site of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration Camp.

Archaeologists discovered candlesticks and chandeliers, probably bronze, on Monday at the site of the Great Synagogue of Oświęcim, which was demolished in 1939. The items, buried 65 years ago, were part of the furnishings of the synagogue.