News

The latest in a series of seminars organized by the Museum for educators from the Yad Vashem Memorial Institute in Israel has begun. Group exchanges between the two institutions have been underway for several years.

Museum director Jerzy Wróblewski and his deputy, Krystyna Oleksy, took part in the solemn ceremonies commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the murder of the Jews in Jedwabne. During the ceremony, Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski apologized to the Jews for the murder committed there sixty years earlier. - "I apologize in my own name and in the name of all Poles whose conscience is disturbed by that crime," said Kwasniewski. "We know with complete certainty that there were Poles among the persecutors and perpetrators. We cannot have any doubts: here, in Jedwabne, citizens of the Polish Republic died at the hands of other citizens of the Republic. This is what people did to people, and what neighbors did to neighbors."

Peter King, chairman of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, made a two-day visit to the Museum. He was accompanied by members of ICOMOS (the International Council of Monuments and Sites - the international non-governmental organization responsible for setting standards in the heritage conservation community) and representatives of the international commission of experts who will advise on solving problems connected with the Museum buffer zone and with establishing a pedestrian connection between the Auschwitz and Birkenau sites.

The exhibition I Still Have So Much to Do - Jerzy Adam Brandhuber, Oct. 23 1897-June 19, 1981 is on view in the Museum's temporary exhibition room in Block no. 12 on the site of the former Auschwitz I-Main Camp from June 1 through the end of October 2001.

It is not yet known who broke into the "Theatre" building adjacent to the site of the camp and the gravel pit. The thieves stole iron radiators, central heating system valves, and part of the electrical installation. They also left behind evidence of a drinking bout during which a door and a picture of Jesus Christ were struck with an axe, and derogatory remarks about the police, the Polish government, and Jews were scrawled on the walls.

Ceremonies marking the 61st anniversary of the first transport of 728 Polish prisoners from the Tarnów prison to Auschwitz Concentration Camp were held at the site of the camp. Because they fell on the same day as Corpus Christi (a public holiday in Poland), the commemorations took a more modest form. A documentary film about the first transport of Poles to Auschwitz was shown.