News

About 7 thousand young people—Jews from all over the world and Poles—joined the 16th March of the Living in Oświęcim on Monday. First held more than a decade ago, the March represents homage and an expression of remembrance towards the victims of the Shoah.

The so-called national exhibitions have been located on the grounds of the former Auschwitz I camp since 1960. Those exhibitions were prepared by some of the countries which had been occupied by German Nazis during World War II and whose citizens had been deported to Auschwitz.

The Museum’s archival collections were recently enriched by a copy of an album containing 75 photos of the SS hospital, which was located behind the SS barracks in Birkenau. The photos were taken from 1941 to 1944, apparently to illustrate the progress of construction work and for propaganda purposes.

In recent days, the inventory of trees at the site of the Auschwitz camp has been reduced by the loss of three historic poplars, the oldest of which was over 90 years old. Many years of efforts to save the trees proved incapable of halting the natural process of dying, and the hard decision to cut the trees down had to be made this year.

Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Director Piotr Cywiński recently paid a call on the State Higher Vocational School in Oświęcim and held talks with the school’s rector, Professor Lucjan Suchanek, and its chancellor, Adam Bilski. They discussed cooperation between the two neighboring institutions, both of which have great educational roles.

Aleksander Lasik’s Sztafety Ochronne w systemie niemieckich obozów koncentracyjnych. Rozwój organizacyjny, ewolucja zadań i struktur oraz socjologiczny obraz obozowych załóg SS [The Protective Squadrons in the German concentration camp system: The organizational development, evolution of tasks and structures, and sociological makeup of the SS concentration camp garrisons], over 500 pages long, is the newest title published by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. Its author is a Polish historian and expert on the SS.