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Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum historian Franciszek Piper denies that Hollerith machines were used to keep records at the camp. Edwin Black states that IBM assisted Hitler in carrying out the destruction of the Jews. Black makes the assertion in his book IBM and the Holocaust, published simultaneously in 20 countries in mid-Feburary. One of the most powerful images from American writer Edwin Black's IBM and the Holocaust is that of a Hollerith machine, using punch cards produced by IBM, standing in the Auschwitz administrative offices. Yet Franciszek Piper, director of the Research Department at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum denies that there was such a machine at the camp. Nor were punch cards used to keep records on prisoners at Auschwitz, states Piper.

Just after midnight on February 1, a bus carrying miners to the nearby Piast coal mine went out of control and struck the "Gate of Death" at the site of the Birkenau camp, dislodging part of the wall and damaging the metal gate and the protective grille over the railroad tracks.

The British Embassy has donated a Pentium III computer worth approximately 12,000 zloty ($4,000) to the Museum. The computer was installed in the office of the director of the Archives, where it will function as the server for the archival network and facilitate coordination of work on a catalogue of the resources there.

The annual training program for Museum guides began in January. The aim is to enhance the quality of guide services offered by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial.

Work on the "Historical and Memorial Description of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp Site" has been completed.

Stefan Stapelberg, head of the Rent-a-Guru company in Heidelberg, Germany, has donated a copy of the commercial version of HTTP-Analyze software to the Museum.