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Several thousand young Jews from all around the world were joined by numerous Polish young people at the nineteenth March of the Living. This year, the event was dedicated to the memory of the one-and-a-half million children who died in the Shoah. In the wake of the recent disaster involving the Polish government aircraft at Smolensk, near Katyń, black mourning ribbons appeared on many of the Israeli and Polish flags. Before the start of the March, the Ambassador of Israel in Poland, Zvi Rav-Ner, said that the event would also pay tribute this year to the Polish president, Mrs. Kaczyńska, and the victims of the air disaster. “Today, we will march in solidarity with the entire Polish nation,” he said. “President Kaczyński and his wife were friends of Israel and the Jewish people.”

A ceremony commemorating the seventieth anniversary of the Katyn Massacre by the NKVD of more than 21,000 Poles, mostly army officers, was held at the cemetery in the Katyn Forest in Russia on April 7. Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland attended at the invitation of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of Russia. The Polish delegation also included numerous relatives of the victims, Minister of Culture and National Heritage Bogdan Zdrojewski, clergy of many denominations, and, as guests of Prime Minister Tusk, Lech Wałęsa, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Andrzej Wajda, Norman Davies, Paweł Machcewicz, and Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywiński, the director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.

Today, on April 10, 2010, Polish president Lech Kaczyński died in a plane crash near Smolensk. He headed almost a hundred person delegation to pay homage to Polish officers murdered 70 years ago in Katyn. All members of the delegation died in the catastrophe: The Spouse of the President, the highest officials of the Polish State, Members of Parliament, bishops and chaplains, generals and officers of the Polish Army, veterans, representatives of Katyń Families and other organizations, officials of the Government Protection Bureau and the crew of the aircraft.

Most of this issue of Oś is dedicated to the commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Inside, you will find reports of the commemorations, as well as the words of former prisoners and politicians that were said during the ceremony at the former Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and the Pauza Foundation for the Development and Promotion of Contemporary Art have published Mikołaj Grynberg’s album Auschwitz: What Am I Doing Here?

The heads of the two institutions have signed a cooperation agreement between the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and the Mauthausen Memorial. It covers the sharing of more than 300 thousand digital records related to documents held by the archives in the two memorial sites.