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President of the Republic of Poland Bronisław Komorowski visited the Auschwtiz Memorial
On 17th May, the President of the Republic of Poland, Bronisław Komorowski, visited the Memorial Site and the Auschwitz Museum. In front of the building of the former camp's crematorium and gas chamber no. I, he laid a wreath and paid tribute to the victims of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp.
It was in this place in August 1940, two months after the opening of the camp by the Germans, intended at first for Polish political prisoners, that the burning of the corpses of the victims began. It was also here, less than two years later, that the killing of Jews at Auschwitz on a massive scale began before the gas chambers and crematoria at Birkenau were built.
Bronisław Komorowski also wrote an inscription in the guestbook of the Museum. “The enclosure of the former camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau has been designated a place on Earth where those who visit should say out loud: ‘This shall not be repeated!’ Our common goal is to make this symbol to the fall of humanity a warning for all time, a sign of opposition against evil, crime and the destruction of human dignity. At the same time, it would be a cry to take care of the most important values and human rights” — wrote the President of the RP.
During the President’s visit, he met with the director of the Museum, Dr Piotr M.A. Cywiński, and familiarised himself with the concept of the forthcoming new main exhibition.
A new exhibition presenting the main functions and the history of the Auschwitz concentration will be ready to open in the coming years, in a six camp buildings, and will ;replace the current exhibition that has been in that place since 1955.
“The scenario of the new main exhibition is now ready. At the moment, we have begun work on the design of the project. The works will last nearly ten years, due to the need for comprehensive repair and maintenance on the six blocks that will encompass all three parts of the new exhibition” — said Cywiński.
This is not the first visit by President Bronisław Komorowski to the Auschwitz Memorial Site. In 2011, he took part in the celebration of the 66th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. He said, among other things: "Here in Auschwitz-Birkenau, as perhaps nowhere else, we are painfully confronted with the nightmare of war and with the memory of the nightmare of war—the war that cost the lives of many millions of people. Yet here in Auschwitz the knowledge and memory of all the horrific crimes are focused as if by a lens. This place is one of the symbols of the tragedy that the world lived through, that Europe lived through, and that the nations that had to grapple with the great challenge of the wave of hatred, the wave of Nazism, lived through.”;
The new main exhibition at the Auschwitz Memorial Site will consist of an initial exhibition and three main parts. The first will focus on the camp as a state institution — organised by the German machine, the objectives of which were consistently carried out by trained and well-prepared perpetrators.
The second part will present the extermination of Jews in Auschwitz. Its aim is to raise the awareness of visitors, both the individual, as well as the masses, to the importance of the largest genocide in history.
The third part will focus on the fate of the prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp. The crux of the narrative will be the dehumanisation policies implemented by the SS, which tried to transform man into a number, day by day, trampling on his dignity before completely destroying him physically.
