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For the eleventh time, Jews came from all over the world to pay tribute to the victims who were murdered in Auschwitz Concentration Camp. As is traditional, the march began with the blowing of the shofar, after which the participants walked the three kilometers from the "Arbeit macht frei" gate to the ruins of the Birkenau gas chambers.

It seems to me that they come, first of all, to see the Holocaust sites: the largest and symbolically the most important one is in Oświęcim. Second, they come to see a place where anti-Semitism flourished. And perhaps still flourishes.

Oświęcim municipal authorities are in an uproar over the recent protest by the Wiesenthal Center against the construction of a commercial complex at the tannery site. The local government sees the protest as an attack on the right of the local government to make decisions about the future of the city, and reaffirms that Oświęcim, a city of 45,000 with a rich, 800-year-long history, has the right to normal life and municipal development.

A temporary exhibition titled "Women in Auschwitz Concentration Camp: The Sixtieth Anniversary of the Women's Camp" was opened in the lobby of the Reception Building at the Museum on March 26.

"Czech Prisoners in Auschwitz Concentration Camp" will be located upstairs in Block no. 16, with "The Tragedy of the Slovakian Jews" on the ground floor of the same building. The exhibitions are being designed and set up by the Terezin (Theresienstadt) Museum in the Czech Republic and the Slovakian National Uprising Museum in Banka Bystryca, Slovakia, in the name of the ministries of culture of the two countries.

Michel Azaria, vice-chairman of JEAA (the Judeo-Spanish at Auschwitz Association), visited the Museum. The JEAA has been engaged for some time in efforts to place a new plaque in the traditionnal language of Sephardic Jews at the Monument to the Victims of Auschwitz Concentration Camp.