News
Decision by Oświęcim President Marszałek Overturned in Its Entirety
The outlook for building a modern center to serve visitors to the Auschwitz Memorial is improving. The Local Government Appeals Board has reversed in its entirety a ruling by Oświęcim President Janusz Marszałek, who had refused to issue construction guidelines for the work at the site of the PKSiS bus garage. Marszałek had suspended the administrative proceeding for one year, citing work on a new municipal zoning ordinance.
The Appeals Board found that Marszałek’s rationalization for the ruling “did not specify credible reasons to justify the suspension of the proceeding.” The Board’s ruling noted that “the fact of initiating work on a zoning ordinance does not in itself justify suspending proceedings for the issuance of construction guidelines . . . [and] the planned construction is not contrary to the study of local land use and development that is being used as the basis for the zoning ordinance that is being worked on.”
“I am pleased that the Board has fully accepted our arguments. Janusz Marszałek’s decision hindering the new construction was something that I was incapable of understanding in terms of common-sense concern for the public good,” said Museum Director Dr. Piotr M.A. Cywiñski. “The situation was becoming entirely pathological. The new parking facility and space for receiving visitors arriving at the Memorial are sorely needed.”
Director Cywiński noted with satisfaction that the Appeals Board stated outright that the Museum’s initiative did not contradict the study of local land use. “Today that land is also used as parking for cars and buses. Small-scale commercial services are already being rendered there. We want to organize a big international competition for the design of a modern visitor reception center. What we need at this point is the construction guidelines for the new building. Harassment can only delay this project, which makes it all the harder for me to understand Janusz Marszałek’s decision, which has fortunately been overturned by the Appeals Board.”
The International Auschwitz Council has approved plans for a new visitor center at the site of the PKSiS, and a special appropriation by the Ministry of Culture makes financing possible. In the future, there will be parking at the site, along with an up-to-date reception center for visitors, who continue to arrive at the Memorial in large, undiminished numbers. This year, over a million people from all over the world have already come to the Memorial. The new center will also mean new jobs and premises in which local companies can do business.
Relocating visitor services will make it possible to set up a new introductory exhibit in the original camp building that is now used for reception purposes. The new exhibition is intended to provide visitors with essential information about the history of the 1930s, including the rise of Nazism, propaganda, the totalitarian system, the outbreak of the war, and German policy in occupied Poland.
