News
New Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum Director to Come in September 2006.
June 12, Warsaw (PAP-Polish Press Agency) – Piotr Cywiński was named director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum on Monday by Minister of Culture and National Heritage Kazimierz Michał Ujazdowski. Cywiński will take up his duties on September 1.
Cywiński is also secretary of the International Auschwitz Council. His predecessor as Museum Director, Jerzy Wróblewski, is retiring.
The new director stated that he wants to attract more young people to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum by offering special educational and information programs aimed at them.
He added that the Museum's main exhibition also requires changes. "This exhibition is getting on in years," he said. "Although I have no reservations as to the factual content, the forms of educating and interacting with visitors have changed completely, and new methods will have to be introduced that speak more directly to the younger generation."
"At present, we face such challenges as the passing away—in imminent terms, unfortunately—of former prisoners, eyewitnesses, and people capable of saying something on the basis of their own experience. This makes entirely new concepts of education imperative. It is a paradox," Cywiński said, "that millions of people visit places of this type each year, museums, and this type of camp. Yet in fact, when genocide is committed somewhere, these voices are not heard."
Cywiński explained that installing the International Center for Education on Auschwitz and the Holocaust in its new premises in the nearest possible future will be his "number-one priority."
Piotr M.A. Cywiński
Cywiński was born in Warsaw on April 16, 1972. He holds degrees in history from the University of the Humanities in Strasbourg and the Catholic University of Lublin. He holds a Ph.D. from the History Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences and is chairman of the Warsaw Catholic Intellectuals Club.
His father Bohdan Cywiński was a political emigre, as a result of which Piotr M.A. Cywiński lived in Switzerland and France from 1982-1993. He helped organize the Gniezno Assemblies in 2003, 2004, and 2005. Since 2004, he has been European chairman of Pax Romana, the International Catholic Movement for Intellectual and Cultural Affairs. Since 2000, he has been secretary of the International Auschwitz Council and was one of the creators of the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust, of which he is vice-chairman of the Board.
From 2001-2004, Cywiński was also a member of the Polish European Integration Council's NGO Consultative Board. Since 2002, he has been a member of the Polish Episcopate's task force for discussions with the Greek Catholic church in Ukraine.
