News

August 2 marked the 58th anniversary of the "liquidation" of the so-called "Gypsy family camp" in Birkenau. The last Roma left alive there—almost 3,000 men, women, and children—were murdered in the gas chambers. The Zigeunerlager [Gypsy camp] was founded in February 1943 on orders from Himmler, who ordered the deportation of the Roma who had not yet been expelled from the German Reich, Austria, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

Observances connected with the sixtieth anniversary of the death of Edith Stein will be held from August 6-9 in the Oświęcim Center for Dialogue and Prayer. The main mass will be celebrated by Cardinal Franciszek Macharski, Archbishop of Cracow. The Days of Recollection will include a visit to the site of the concentration camp and a nocturnal vigil in the Carmelite Sisters convent.

At 6:00 p.m. on July 15 and 19, there will be meetings at the Center for Dialogue with Halina Birenbaum, former Auschwitz prisoner, who has been traveling around the world for years, bearing witness to her tragic experiences during the period when Europe was conquered and ruled by the Nazis.

The Mechelen Museum of Deportation and the Resistance in Malines, the central institution for Holocaust research in Belgium, has presented the Museum with a data base containing information on 10,000 people of Jewish origin who lived in Belgium during the Nazi occupation.

The last session in this year's postgraduate course on "Totalitarianism, Nazism, and the Holocaust," organized by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in cooperation with the National Education Commission Academy of Pedagogy in Cracow, ended on Friday, July 5. Thirty-two teachers of history and Polish, mostly from Małopolska province, participated in the course this year. The formal closing ceremony and awarding of diplomas will be held in Oświęcim on September 7.

The City Tourist Information Point has opened at the Museum. Its staff will offer practical help and encourage them to visit the city of Oświęcim and learn about its 800-year history.