News

Will the Lack of a Plan Hold Everything Up?

Oświęcim mayor Janusz Marszałek blames the lack of a current local zoning plan for the failure to obtain a ruling covering the use of the land on which the Old Theater stands, including any construction there. The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim wants to locate the International Center for Teaching about Auschwitz and the Holocaust there.

150 former prisoners, the majority from Poland, have so far signed the Foundation Act. Citizens of Belarus, Ukraine, Israel, and the USA have also signed; the signatories include such figures as Halina Birenbaum and Henryk Mandelbaum, the last Sonderkommando veteran remaining alive in Poland.

Cooperation with Yad Vashem

The opening of the Center will transform the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum’s educational activity and adapt it to the needs and requirements of the 21st century. The Center plans to cooperate closely with the Yad Vashem Institute of Jerusalem and the Washington Holocaust Memorial, as well as with leading universities around the world, and numerous international institutions and organizations.

The Donors Are Lined Up But Where’s The Plan?

The Grand Circle Foundation of Boston, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp Victims Memorial Foundation, and several Polish government ministries have expressed a desire to underwrite the new Center’s work.

So far, the Museum has already booked $1,250,000 in donations to adapt the building that once housed the Carmelite nuns’ convent. Work was supposed to have begun this spring; it is already known to be behind schedule.

The mayor of Oświęcim has issued a statement calling on Museum management to make a new application to City Hall about the conditions for construction and land use involved in changing the status of the Old Theater building to house the International Center for Teaching about Auschwitz and the Holocaust.

“The director of the Museum applied earlier for zoning permission with the status of a public institution, consisting in adapting the Old Theater building as the Center for Teaching about Auschwitz and the Holocaust. However, the current regulations make it impossible for us to issue such a decision. After reviewing the Museum’s appeal, the Local Government Appeals Collegium in Cracow upheld that position. The project should thus be carried out under the normal zoning procedures, which is what the Museum is now proposing,” said Marszałek. Unfortunately, no zoning ordinance has yet been passed to cover the terrain involved, and there is a legal obligation to draw up such an ordinance. Until it is passed, everything connected with this construction prospect must be suspended.”

The Museum administration is not attempting to conceal its uneasiness, out of fears that the delay in the project could rule out the whole adaptation plan, which is slated to be finished at the end of next year.