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The First Year of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation
Pledges to the Perpetual Fund created by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation already amount to €67 million. This is more than half the amount needed to ensure the financing of the long-term conservation plan for the grounds of the Memorial. The Foundation Council met for the second time at the Chancellery of the Prime Minister in Warsaw to discuss plans for the immediate future, introduce needed changes to its statute, and pass a motion on the guidelines for investing the assets of the Fund.
Established last year, the Foundation is tasked with raising €120 million for the Fund. The resulting interest income will make it possible to protect the remains of the Auschwitz Nazi German concentration camp and extermination center from the ravages of time.
The German federal government and the federal states have already declared support for the Foundation in the amount of €60 million. “After the signing of the contract, the first payment is planned for 2011. Austria has pledged €6 million. Smaller amounts have been paid by several other countries, and advanced discussions are underway with countries including France, Belgium, the United States, and Great Britain,” said Foundation Director General Jacek Kastelaniec
Museum Director Piotr M.A. Cywiński, who is also President of the Foundation Management Board , said that the first year’s hard work had already yielded very concrete results. “The State Museum must now prepare its conservation structures to absorb a regular income for carrying out its overall conservation plan. I believe that the first contributions will arrive in 2012, and that they will rise significantly year by year,” he said.
On the idea of establishing the Foundation, Noah Flug, chairman of the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors, declared: “In the name of the former prisoners, I can say that the existence of Auschwitz as a Museum, as an education center, and as a Memorial is exceptionally important for us. It is a place where people see what National Socialism led to, and the condition at which humanity could arrive under the control of the Nazi thugs. This Foundation is intended to secure its existence in perpetuity, so that people can learn and be convinced of what humanity is capable of.”
Archbishop Józef Życiński, the Metropolitan of Lublin, is of a similar opinion. “I support this initiative wholeheartedly,” he said. “If we erased from history the memory of this tragedy in which people inflicted such an inhuman fate on others, it would be a kind of amputation that would open the door to the repetition in future generations of the dangers known from history.
The meeting approved guidelines for investing the assets of the Fund, as worked out by the Council’s Financial Committee. “The security of the assets is the most important element, more important than the profitability of the investment. This is the beginning of a very important program. There are also measures to ensure transparency at the highest level, and there is a whole monitoring process,” said Committee Chairman Józef Wancer. The changes to the statute make the Financial Committee a formal part of the Foundation structure. The court with jurisdiction over the Foundation must still approve these changes.
The work of the Foundation is supported on a pro bono basis by the law firm of Weil, Gotschal & Manges and, for tax matters, by the Ernst and Young consulting firm. The Union of Jewish Religious Communities in the Polish Republic makes premises available to the Foundation in the Jewish Community building in Warsaw.
