News

The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum has posted on its website the names of Poles from Lublin deported by the Nazis to the Nazi German Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. The database is more than a valuable source of historical information; it is also a monument to the memory of people whose lives were tragically scarred by Auschwitz.

Twenty-five U.S. soldiers undergoing training at the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth took part in the Raphael Lemkin Seminar, which took place from September 19 to 28. Its purpose was to analyze the issues of preventing genocide in the context of the history of Auschwitz. The seminar was co-organized by the International Centre for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust....

A highly interesting collection of decorated greeting cards made by Auschwitz prisoners has been added to the Museum collections. Helena Datoń-Szpak, who worked in the SS canteen as a young girl during the war, donated the priceless items to the Museum. Datoń-Szpak aided prisoners in various ways and acted as an intermediary in their illegal correspondence. The prisoners gave her the handwritten, hand-painted cards to mark holidays and name days.

The International Centre for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust has concluded the recruiting process for this year’s seminar, “Judaism—History and Culture of Polish Jews—Holocaust” at Yad Vashem, which is organized for Polish teachers, guides, museum curators, and educators engaged in teaching about Auschwitz and the Holocaust.

Two conferences on Memorials at the sites of German concentration camps and extermination centers took place in early September. The First Remembrance Forum Seminar of Polish Martyrdom Museums at the Stutthof Museum featured discussions focusing on education. A conference at the Polish Academy of Sciences Research Station in Vienna compared the situation at memorials in Poland and Austria. Members of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum staff attended both.

For four days during a conference entitled “Auschwitz and the Holocaust against the backdrop of genocide in the twentieth century”, teachers from across Poland attended lectures, as well as discussed the nature and the consequences of genocide in the modern world. Discussion also focused on contemporary challenges facing education about tragic events of the past. During the conference, which took place at the International Youth Meeting Center, panel discussions were held dedicated to the topic of “responsibility” in which several spoke, including: Prof. Zdzisław Mach, Prof. Andrzej Zoll and Zbigniew Gluza. In Oś you will find excerpts of the debate, as well as an article on the conference.