News

The newly opened Lasry House will contain "The Center for Holocaust Studies" at Clark University. Academics from Israel, Europe, and the United States attended the accompanying conference and workshops, as did Teresa Swiebocka, Senior custodian and Director of the Museum's Department of Publishing and Information. She delivered a lecture titled, "The Many-Layered Symbolism of Auschwitz and its Effect on the Work of the Museum and Its Plans for the Future."

The Law on the Protection of Former Nazi Death Camps that was passed in May has regulated issues associated with such sites, which are now treated as landmarks. The grounds occupied by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and the surrounding buffer zone are therefore designated in a final way.

The Museum now has a permanent connection to the Internet.

The press carried articles about archival material recovered by the Museum from the Russians. It consists in part of documents listing the names of forced laborers and lists of German firms engaged in constructing the camp.

Members of the United States Congress began an energetic campaign calling on Poland to return the paintings by the former Auschwitz prisoner. Nevada Representative Shelley Berkley (D) read an appeal in the House for Poland and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum to return seven works left behind in the camp to 76-year-old Dina Gottliebova-Babbitt, who painted them.

A new copy of the Torah scrolls, copied by a group of families from Long Island, New York, was dedicated at a ceremony in the former Lomdej Misznajot synagogue building in Oswiecim.