News

The so-called Central Sauna building, the biggest object on the grounds of the former Birkenau camp, was rendered accessible to visitors. It will also comprise the permanent exposition with family photographs of Jews, who were deported to the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. In this building, which went into use in late 1943, newly arrived prisoners, mainly Jews, were registered and subjected to disinfection before being exploited as slave laborers. In fact, these prisoners were deprived of their own identities and transformed from people into numbers. This was where the Nazis began what can be defined as an attempt at dehumanization. Visitors can learn about the function and history of the object by walking through the rooms in the same order as the victims were forced to do.

The Museum Education Center organized a conference on "Children in Auschwitz Concentration Camp." Participants included 30 Polish and history teachers from Malopolska and Silesia provinces. These teachers have all completed the Department's post-graduate course.

In line with tradition, the tenth March of the Living was held on Yom Ha-Shoa, Holocaust Victims Commemoration Day, which fell on Thursday, April 19, this year. As on previous occasions, participants included young Jewish people from all over the world, and especially from Israel, the USA, Canada, and Europe.

The governor of Małopolska province yesterday withdrew permission for the construction and use of the discotheque that was set up last August on the site of the Oświęcim tannery where prisoners from the Nazi Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp labored and were killed during the war (for the Museum's opinion on the matter, see "August" in "Latest News 2000.").

A memorial plaque was unveiled near the site of the Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp on the sixtieth anniversary of the deportation by the Nazis of the residents of Brzezinka. During his first visit to Auschwitz in March 1941, Heinrich Himmler decided to expand the Auschwitz Main Camp and to build a new camp, Birkenau, with a capacity of 100,000 prisoners. Over the next two months, the civilian residents of the villages of Pławy, Babice, Broszkowice, Brzezinka, Budy, Harmęże, and Rajsko were evicted from their homes.

More than 6,000 residents of the city of Oświęcim have signed a petition calling for a referendum on plans for a new zoning ordinance for the areas around the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.