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Auschwitz Museum among the world’s top museums
The Auschwitz Museum is the tenth museum in the world and the third in Europe according to the result of a ranking published by the tourism website TripAdvisor . This award is all the more important due to the fact that the reports of this portal are prepared on the basis of the opinion of Internet users and travellers.
The Museum which is located on the site of the former German Nazi concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, in the TripAdvisor ranking came before such institutions as the Louvre, the British Museum, the Prado, the Vatican Museum. It is the only Polish museum in both European and global listing.
“This result shows that you can work on memory in a different way than trendy multimedia and interactivity,” underlines Dr Piotr M.A. Cywiński, director of the Museum. “The meaning of authenticity, seemingly silent, seems to speak to people in its own voice. Behind this is obviously the great work of the educators, guides and curators. This result also shows how difficult it is to understand the contemporary world and its challenges without extensive reference to the Holocaust, which, however, was not so much an event as a turning point in the history of Europe and the world. Through this, Auschwitz has become a point of reference for many current questions and challenges,” says Cywiński.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum has by far the largest turnout of all the former German camps. In the past few years, it has been visited annually by nearly one and a half million people. Most of them are young people. Thanks to a group of nearly 300 specially trained educators, visitors can take guided tours in 19 languages.
Today, the Museum is primarily a Memorial Site, but it is also a centre of education, conservation and research. It is a rapidly growing organisation maintaining large investment activities, mainly in the area of the protection of collections, archives and visitor services. Wider information on the activities of the Museum can be found in the annual report.
