News

In the name of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, the head of the Research Department, Dr. Piotr Setkiewicz, laid a wreath at the Death Wall to mark the National Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Nazi Concentration Camps. On this day seventy years ago, the Nazi Germans deported 728 Polish political prisoners from the prison in Tarnów to the newly founded Auschwitz camp.

A new exhibition in block 15 at the Auschwitz I site will present the fate of more than 450,000 Polish citizens—Poles and Polish Jews—deported to the Auschwitz Nazi German concentration camp and extermination center.

Pledges to the Perpetual Fund created by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation already amount to €67 million. This is more than half the amount needed to ensure the financing of the long-term conservation plan for the grounds of the Memorial. The Foundation Council met for the second time at the Chancellery of the Prime Minister in Warsaw to discuss plans for the immediate future, introduce needed changes to its statute, and pass a motion on the guidelines for investing the assets of the Fund.

The International Auschwitz Council debated the flood, the fund for maintaining the authenticity of the Memorial, and the new main exhibition while familiarizing itself with the most important aspects of the functioning of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. Professor Władysław Bartoszewski chaired the meet.

The International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust has released a collection of lesson plans entitled, Artistic Creations of the Auschwitz Prisoners. Educational Materials for Teachers. The materials prepared are based on the album Suffering and Hope. Artistic Creations of the Auschwitz Prisoners, created under the care of Jerzy Dałek and Teresa Świebocka. The lesson plans are created for educational work done with students in their third year of secondary school and above. In addition, the lesson plan materials prepared by practicing teachers are excellent help while choosing the method of teaching about the tragic history of Auschwitz.

29 May 2010, the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust and the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oświęcim organized an education session entitled, “Borowski’s Auschwitz — in literature and film”. During the session, participants attended a lecture by Bartłomiej Krupa from the Adam Mickiewicz „Häftling number 119198 – Life and Work”, in which a general picture of the life and work of Tadeusz Borowski was presented, with a particular emphasis of the writer’s time in the concentration camp as well as traces of this in his prose and poetry.