News
Museum Clears the Way for Modern Visitor Service Center and New Introductory Exhibition
PKSiS Sells Transport Base to Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. The Oświęcim Motor Transport and Shipping Enterprise (PKSiS) and the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum have signed an agreement for the purchase by the Museum of the PKSiS facility on ulica Więźniów Oświęcimia. PKSiS put the property up for sale, and special financial support from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage made the transaction possible.
The existing infrastructure and parking space at the new premises mean that extensive adaptation work will not be necessary. Over the next few years, a modern reception center for groups arriving at the Memorial will be erected on the more than 3 hectares of the site. There will be parking areas and a bookstore in addition to the reception center. The new facility will improve the service offered to the more than 1 million visitors who come to the Museum each year.
The Museum will install a green belt and protective screens with the consent of and in the interest of the comfort of the nearby residents. Some of the postwar buildings at the new site will be dismantled, while buildings dating from the days of Auschwitz Concentration Camp will remain in place and be conserved.
The new location for visitor services will make it possible to open a new introductory exhibition in the original camp building that now serves as the reception center. The introductory exhibition will offer visitors essential knowledge about the history of the 1930s, the rise of Nazism, propaganda, totalitarianism, and, finally, the start of the war and German policy in occupied Poland. Only after this introduction will visitors move on to the notorious Arbeit macht frei gate.
The PKSiS facility lies outside the buffer zone demarcated around the Auschwitz Memorial in 1999. This means that there will be no obstacles to the location there of commercial operations that sometimes evoked controversy when they functioned within the Memorial zone. “People in Oświęcim have misgivings about any expansion of the zone,” said Dr. Piotr M.A. Cywiński, director of the Museum. “This solution means that it will be in the interests of the Museum for the newly acquired territory to remain outside the zone. By the same token, the opponents to the expansion of the zone now have a powerful new ally, in the shape of the Museum itself.”
The Oświęcim PKSiS put its premises on ul. Więźniów Oświęcimia on the market on February 19, 2008. The Museum expressed interest and began looking for financial backing. The annual general meeting of PKSiS shareholders approved the sale to the Museum in June. The sales agreement, signed on October 27, was accompanied by a down payment. This much needed financial infusion will enhance the Oświęcim firm’s potential for development.
The sales agreement envisions a transition period, so that PKSiS can continue to function at the site through 2009 while preparing to shift operations to a new location. When that occurs, the Museum will begin adapting the site for its new use.
