News
On the State of Human Rights in the Contemporary World
Judges from the Constitutional Tribunal of the Polish Republic and the Constitutional Court of the Italian Republic made a joint visit to the Museum on Friday, March 31. They toured the site of the German concentration camp and laid wreaths at the Death Wall in Auschwitz and the Monument to Victims of the Camp in Birkenau.
In the afternoon, they held a scholarly symposium on human rights at the nearby Center for Dialogue and Prayer. Invited guests spoke about the work of the Center for Dialogue, the educational activities of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, and the subject of human rights from the perspective of Auschwitz.
Speakers included Marek Safjan, chairman of the Constitutional Tribunal, his Italian counterpart, Annibale Marini, former Polish ombudsman and Constitutional Tribunal chairman Andrzej Zoll, Fr. Manfred Deselaers and Fr. Jan Nowak of the Center for Dialogue, Andrzej Kacorzyk of the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust, and Piotr M.A. Cywiński, secretary of the International Auschwitz Council.
At the end of the symposium, the Polish and Italian judges signed a “Message to Europe” and made a joint entry in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum’s Guest Book.
The schedule for the Italian judges’ visit to Poland also included an official meeting with Marek Jurek, speaker of the Polish Sejm (parliament) and a visit to Archbishop Stanisław Dziwisz, the metropolitan of Cracow.
