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The fifth setting of the International Auschwitz Council was held in Oświęcim on April 15-16. The Council was convened by the Polish prime minister to advise on museums and monuments at the Holocaust and concentration camp sites in Poland.

The lack of a response from the Malopolska provincial monuments officer is delaying the start of production in the buildings that used to belong to the now-bankrupt Oświęcim Vehicle Repair Factory, which were purchased last September by an Italian firm that plans to employ up to 300 people there.

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.