News

In July, the Visitors Services Section organized a two-week seminar on "The Collective Awareness of Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland and Around the World." Participants included 18 staff members and historians from Yad Vashem in Israel and 3 from the Holocaust Museum in Washington.

The International Lesbian and Gay Cultural Network (ILGCN) has awarded the Museum its Orfeo Iris-2000 Human Rights Prize. In it's announcement, the ILGCN stated that the award was made "in honor of those homosexual prisoners who perished in Auschwitz ... and for your museum's printed information mentioning the imprisonment of homosexuals in the Nazi camps, your displaying the prison uniform's pink triangles used by the Nazis to identify homosexuals...."

Results have been announced in the 1999 Museum Event of the Year contest. A jury chaired by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage awarded first prize in the Publication category to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum for "Auschwitz 1940-1945.

Ceremonies were held on the grounds of the former camp to mark the anniversary of the deportation to Auschwitz Concentration Camp from the Tarnów prison of the first transport of 728 Poles. They obtained serial numbers 31 to 758 (the first 30 numbers were reserved for German capos). Approximately 240 of these prisoners survived the camp, and 79 of them are still alive. Some 45 of these survivors attended the ceremony. One of them was prisoner number 31, Stanislaw Ryniak.

A new exhibition opened on June 12 in the reception center for visitors to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. The exhibition is devoted to the first transport of prisoners sent to Auschwitz Concentration Camp by the German occupying forces.

On June 7, 2000, a ceremony was held in the Hall of Columns of the Prime Minister's Chancellery, during which Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek presented nominations to newly appointed members of the International Auschwitz Council.