News
60 Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz Nearing
Sept. 23, Bielsko-Biała (PAP) – The Council for the Protection of the Memory of Fighting and Martyrdom is to organize the observances of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the German Auschwitz camp on January 27, 2005, Council General Secretary Andrzej Przewoźnik informed PAP.
“I am now collecting information from many sides and conducting a range of discussions with former prisoners’ groups, the Museum administration, and the authorities in Oświęcim and Cracow, in order to form an opinion and prepare a scenario for the observances. I would like the scenario to be ready by the end of September,” Przewoźnik told PAP.
Przewoźnik said that a working group is already busy preparing the observances. “I will not be naming an organizing committee,” he said. There will be two working groups. One of them, the smaller one, will work in Warsaw, and the second, a larger group, will work in Cracow and Oświęcim,” he explained.
Przewoźnik also pledged to cooperate with the local observance committee already set up by Oświęcim mayor Janusz Marszałek. Przewoźnik has obtained Marszałek’s assurance that the local committee will concentrate above all on commemorating the anniversary of the city of Oświęcim.
Przewoźnik also issued assurances that the observances of the liberation of the city will be an integral part of the commemoration. “My task is to organize the commemoration of major anniversaries,” he said, “but we are aware that they cannot be organized in isolation from the things happening around them. We want them to be organized in such a way that there will be no conflicts. We take local observances into account. Opposing them would be foolish and show a lack of judgment,” he stressed.
Soldiers of the 100th Lvov Infantry Division of the 60th Army, I Ukrainian Front liberated the Nazi Auschwitz camp on January 27, 1945. 231 Soviet soldiers died in combat during the liberation of the camp and the city of Oświęcim.
The Auschwitz camp was founded in 1940. Auschwitz II-Birkenau Concentration Camp was founded two years later. It became, above all, the site of the mass extermination of Polish and European Jews. Auschwitz III constituted a network of sub-camps. The Nazis imprisoned over 1,300,000 people in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Over 1,100,000 people, mostly Polish and European Jews, Poles, Roma, and Soviet POWs, perished there.
