News

A million people have visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum between January and the early days of September 2011. A record number of 1,400,000 people visited the grounds of the former German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp Auschwitz during the whole of 2010. There are many indications that the record will be broken this year. The Auschwitz Memorial has the highest visitor numbers of any Museum in Poland.

The first trial of the mass killing of prisoners with the use of Zyklon-B in the Auschwitz camp probably began seventy years ago, on September 3, 1941, when 850 prisoners were killed. Immediately after evening roll call, the Germans locked about 600 Soviet POWs and 250 sick Polish prisoners selected from the camp hospital in 28 cells in the cellar of block 11 (then block 13). Ten prisoners from the penal company, who had been confined to the jail since September 1 following the escape by a prisoner, were also there.

A permanent Municipal-Museum Cooperative Group has been set up to coordinate joint development. Besides Mayor Janusz Chwierut of the city of Oświęcim and Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum Director Piotr M. A. Cywiński, it includes specialists on investment, promotion, and tourism. The group arose as a joint initiative of the mayor and the Museum director.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum has published The Conservation of the SS-Hygiene Institute Documents, written by the outstanding Museum specialists who headed the experienced team that spent three years conserving over 35,000 original German documents in a unique restoration project.

More than two thousand people, among them former inmates of Auschwitz, Polish pilgrims from all over the country, and the staff of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum attended a Mass, concelebrated by cardinals, bishops, priests and monks at the former German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp Auschwitz.

Conservators from the Auschwitz Memorial Site have reassembled and restored the original sign, bearing the inscription Arbeit macht frei, which was destroyed by thieves. In Oś you can read about how the restoration work progressed as well as see photographs documenting the work that was done.