News

The Gravel Pit - The Minister's Decision

The War Victims' Association must surrender the Oświęcim gravel pit to the state treasury. The minister of internal affairs yesterday upheld the ruling made last August by the wojewoda of Małopolska Province.

Ryszard Masłowski, then wojewoda, ordered the Association to surrender the gravel pit to the state treasury by the end of August 2001. Mieczysław Janosz's Association supported Kazimierz Świtoń's hunger strike against the removal of the so-called papal cross.

Although the ruling was designated as having immediate effect, the grounds have not yet been officially turned over to the state, and Mieczysław Janosz still holds the keys.

Hundreds of prisoners were murdered at the gravel pit when the camp was in operation. The pit first came to public attention after the war when the controversy over the Carmelite sisters' convent broke out in the 1980s. Several hundred crosses erected at the site in the 1990s were removed, along with Kazimierz Świtoń, in 2000, when a new law on the protection of Memorial Sites came into effect.