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Auschwitz Memorial in 2012. Undiminished Interest of the World
In 2012, there were 1,430,000 visitors to the grounds of the former German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp Auschwitz. This is a record number in the 65-years history of the Museum. What is important, more than one million people visited the Memorial annually in the last 6 years.
“Auschwitz in the last decade became a clearly fundamental Memorial of the whole Europe ,” noticed Dr. Piotr M.A Cywiński, director of the Museum. “It reflects the actual meaning of the history of the Shoah and the drama of concentration camps in the history of contemporary Europe and understanding its todays appearance. The growing educational dimension of this Place indirectly shows us also the challenges that our societies face today,” added Cywiński.
The first ten countries whose citizens visited the Auschwitz Memorial include: Poland (446,000), Great Britain (149,000), USA (97,000) and also Italy (84,000), Germany (74,000), Israel (68,000), France (62,000), Spain (54,000), Czech Republic (48,000) and South Korea (46,000).
Number of visitors according to countries.“When we have compared the numbers with 2011 we noticed the highest growth of number of visitors from Canada (200 %) and USA (85 %). There are also more visitors coming from the United Kingdom, Israel, Germany and Spain, “ said Andrzej Kacorzyk, deputy director of the Museum responsible for visitors services. “On the other hand the number of groups from Polish junior high-schools dropped by 25 percent which is a direct effect of changes in history curriculum in Polish school system, “ added Kacorzyk.
Attendance at the Auschwitz Memorial from 2001 to 2012.The great majority of visitors tour both parts of the former camp, Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau, with one of 300 Museum educators guiding in almost 20 languages. Also more individual visitors take advantage of such possibility of discovering the history of the Memorial. In 2012 over 260,000 people chose the option of joining a guided tour organized for individual visitors.
Although nothing can replace a visit at the Memorial and direct contact with history and authenticity, many people use the on-line presence of the Museum. In 2012 the website www.auschwitz.org was visited by more than 1,5 million people and the number of users of our Facebook page closed to 80 thousand. The Museum has also recently created a Twitter account.
