News
Better Access to the Altejudenrampe Site between Auschwitz and Birkenau
A roundabout with parking spaces for busses carrying tourists visiting the so-called Altejudenrampe will be built before the end of the year, PAP has been informed by Andrzej Bibrzycki, wojt of Oświęcim commune, the local government unit that includes the townships surrounding the city of Oświęcim. The Altejudenrampe is the railroad siding located between the German Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau camps, where trains carrying transports of arriving future camp victims stopped during the war.
Bibrzycki said he feels that the investment will significantly increase access to the historic site.
He said that construction of the roundabout and bus parking spaces is being financed by funding from the French Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah, which has appropriated a total of 500 thousand złoty, half of which has already reached the Oświęcim commune.
Bibrzycki said that most of the needed land has already been purchased. Plans for the roundabout and bus parking places will be ready in late April or at the beginning of May. Work near the Altejudenrampe should begin in August.
The Altenjuderampe was opened to visitors in January 2005. The exhibition includes part of the train tracks and the central part of the platform, which is associated with the unloading of the trains and the selection of prisoners. Two train cars, used by the Germans to transport people to Auschwitz, stand on the train tracks. The exhibition also includes texts and photographs on five information boards located near the place where the transports were unloaded and selection of the Jews took place.
Transports carrying more than 500 thousand Jews from all over Europe, as well as tens of thousands of Poles, Roma, and others, arrived at the Altejudenrampe from the spring of 1942 until May 1944. SS physicians carried out selection in the field next to the siding. They sent 70 to 75% of these people straight to the gas chambers.
