News
On the History of Auschwitz in Eighteen Languages
Auschwitz-Birkenau: the Past and the Present is a richly illustrated folder more than 20 pages long in no fewer than eighteen languages including Hebrew, Arabic, and Korean. It is available free of charge from the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum website.
The publication is devoted to the history of the German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp Auschwitz and the founding and present activities of the Museum.
“Our website is available in its entirety in English and Polish versions, but we also wanted to make a certain compendium of knowledge accessible to those who are not fluent in those two languages,” said Auschwitz Museum director Dr. Piotr M.A. Cywiński. “The spectrum of languages in which this minimum of knowledge is available will be expanded to take account of the geography of the countries of origin of visitors to the Museum and our website. We will also consider those cultural areas in which there may still be a lack of reliable information on the subject of Auschwitz and the Holocaust.”
The folder includes basic data on the camp, the origins of its founding and the history of its expansion, the activity of the resistance movement in the camp and in the surrounding area, liberation, and a timeline of the most important events.
The section devoted to the Museum recounts its history from the moment a few months after the end of World War II when a group of Polish former prisoners began publicly propagating the idea of commemorating the victims of Auschwitz. This section also covers the exhibitions, archival collections, conservation challenges, and the work of the International Center for education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust.
The folders are also available in printed form at the Museum and in the Museum’s Internet bookstore.
There were over 2.3 million visitors to the Auschwitz Memorial website in 2010. The Museum also has a Facebook page with over 46 thousand members and an official YouTube channel featuring brief video reports from the Museum, viewed so far by almost 70 thousand people.
See the video: About Auschwitz in 18 languages
