News
Professional Development for the Museum Staff
The year-long course in museum studies at the Jagiellonian University Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology Institute has ended. As has been the case over the several years that the course has been taught, Auschwitz-Museum Birkenau staff members attended. This time, there were eight of them.
They broadened their knowledge of museum practice during the ten-month course. The teachers were members of the university faculty and practitioners from selected museums. Subjects included issues in world and Polish museum practice, including the history of museums, conservation problems, the organization of scholarly research in museums, and legal aspects of museum practice and the protection of cultural goods.
In a study of real-world issues, course participants also attended sessions in twelve museums including Wawel, the Castle Museum in Pszczyna, Poland, the Sącz Ethnographic Park in Nowy Sącz, and the Tatra Museum in Zakopane.
Participants wrote diploma papers on one of four subjects set by the university. The Auschwitz Museum staffers wrote about the functioning of the camp during the war and the use of the site afterwards. For example Klemens Hołownia of the Collections Department wrote about clandestine theatre in the camp, and Andrzej Kacorzyk of the Education Center analyzed the Museum in terms of the expectations of and pressure exerted by the Polish government and party leadership from 1947 to 1955.
