News

Ceremonies in Oświęcim mark the 64th anniversary of the deportation to Auschwitz of the first transport of Polish political prisoners.

Christoph Heubner, Deputy Chairman of the International Auschwitz Committee in Berlin, and Richard Prasquier, chairman of the French Yad Vashem Committee, have been named by Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka to the International Auschwitz Council, the body that advises the Polish government on mater connected to the Auschwitz-Birkenau site, it was announced on Wednesday.

At the St. Maksymilian Center in the town of Harmęże near Oświęcim on May 28, Bishop Adam Śmigielski of Sosnowiec, Poland, unveiled six plaques commemorating 149 Roman Catholic priests and male religious exterminated by the Nazis in the Auschwitz camp during World War II.

The Sybille 2003 awards for the Museum events of the year were announced on International Museum Day. Winners received statuettes of Sybilla at the Royal Castle in Warsaw on Tuesday. This year, the jury did not award a Grand Prix.

A Cracow court has ruled that the Maja company of Oświęcim is bankrupt. In early March, the firm had debts of over 12 million zloty. The Maja company gained notoriety when it began erecting commercial buildings near the site of the Nazi death camp.

The latest exhibition in the cycle highlighting wartime and postwar art by Auschwitz prisoners is Painter of the Holocaust: An Exhibition of the Works of Halina Ołomucka from the Collections of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim. Halina Ołomucka is an outstanding artist of Jewish origin. She was in the Warsaw ghetto before being deported and passing through several concentration camps, including Auschwitz (camp number 48652).