News

In May and June we watched with fear clouded sky and the rising level of rivers around Oświęcim. For the first time in many years the Museum was closed to visitors and archives and collections had to be moved onto higher levels. The real battle with water took place at the site of Birkenau, where water from a nearby river Pławianka almost broke through the barrier. Flood is the main theme in this issue of the magazine.

Ceremonies marking the Day of Remembrance for the Exterminaton of the Roma were held on the sixty-sixth anniversary of the liquidation of the Familienzigeunerlager, the so-called family camp for Sinti and Roma in the Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp. The several hundred people in attendance included former prisoners of Auschwitz and other Nazi camps and ghettos, Roma from Poland and abroad, government officials including Minister Elżbieta Radziszewska as the representative of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, representatives of the European Commission, members of the diplomatic corps, the director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and members of the staff, and local officials.

The Warsaw Uprising began 66 years ago, on August 1, 1944. The heroic combat lasted for 63 days. At five o’clock on the afternoon of the anniversary of these events—W-Hour, the start of the Uprising—Museum Director Dr. Piotr M.A. Cywiński, a Warsaw native, and Piotr Kadlčik, chairman of the Union of Jewish religious communities in Poland, observed a minute of silence in tribute to the heroes and victims of the Uprising, including Warsaw residents deported to Auschwitz from the transit camp in Pruszków. While the sirens sounded, they placed a wreath at the Death Wall outside block 11.

Twenty five  educators from Israel took part in a twelve day seminarorganized from 18-29 of July by the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust at the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau.

At the beginning of July 2010, the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau and The Cracow University of Economics have signed an agreement for cooperation.

The results of the competition for the architectonic-urban design of the new Visitor Service Center at the Auschwitz Memorial have been announced. The contest aimed at developing a complex solution including a service center, hotel, parking facilities, and the accompanying infrastructure. Thirty submissions arrived by the deadline. The winner was the Cracow firm KKM Kozień Architekci, whose previous designs include the Przemyśl Regional Museum and the Radio Koszalin building.