News

'Christian Clergy and Religious Life at Auschwitz' is a new online lesson prepared by the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust in view of the World Youth Day and the visit of Pope Francis to the former German Nazi concentration and extermination camp. The author of the lesson is Teresa Wontor-Cichy, a historian at the Auschwitz Museum Research Center.

In view of the world youth day, which will be held in Krakow in July 2016, as well as the visit of Pope Francis, the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum will be open in this period to visitors under specific conditions.

The headquarters of the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust will be located in the so-called Old Theatre building, which will be adapted for this purpose. The project received funding from the European Union within the framework of priority axis VIII Protection of cultural heritage and development of cultural resources under the Operational Programme Infrastructure and Environment for the period 2014-2020. Its total cost is over PLN 30 million. EU support will exceed PLN 20 million.

The conservation process of half of a wooden prisoners’ barracks of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz II-Birkenau has been completed. The historic building returned to the Memorial in 2013, after over 20 years of loan to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C.

More than a million people have already visited this year - until mid-July - the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial. Never before in the history of the Museum has attendance been so high in this period

On 10 July 2016, the Prime Minister of Canada - Justin Trudeau visited the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum. He was accompanied among others by Nate Leipciger, a former inmate of Auschwitz born in 1928 in Chorzów, who emigrated to Canada in 1948 and repeatedly visited the Memorial during the Marches of the Living, the Canadian Minister for Foreign Affairs Stéphane Dion and Rabbi Adam Scheier from Montreal, Vice-President of the Council of Rabbis. The guests were welcomed by the Director of the Museum dr Piotr M.A. Cywiński, who also told them about the history of the camp, and the contemporary challenges of the Memorial.