AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU

“Polish citizens in KL Auschwitz is the title of the educational project the main objective of which is to spread among young Poles reliable knowledge concerning the history and fate of the citizens of the Second Polish Republic incarcerated and murdered in German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz. Official inauguration of the project took place on June 13th in the Janusz Korczak Hall in the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, with Maciej Kopeć, vice-minister of national education, among its participants.

On 23-26 July 2018, the International Centre for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum organised another edition of the seminar “Auschwitz - history and symbol” for the first time addressed to Ukrainian teachers and educators. It was attended by 23 persons from different parts of Ukraine who are professionally involved with the dissemination of the knowledge of the II World War, and particularly the Holocaust.

After nearly 75 years and a year of negotiations, Poland has recovered the so-called Eiss Archive, one of the most extensive collection documenting the rescue activities of Polish diplomacy for Jews under the threat of the Holocaust, the Ambassador of the Republic of Poland to Bern, the Minister of Culture and National Heritage and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum informed in a joint communique.

The International Centre for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust in collaboration with the International March of the Living organised for the first time a seminar for educators of the March. The seminar was attended by 17 persons, who are involved on a daily basis with teaching on Jewish history, culture and the tragedy of world war II and the Holocaust. The programme included a study visit to Warsaw and Oświecim with the purpose of sharing experiences and showing how educators from Polish institutions conduct educational activities.

August 2nd is commemorated in Poland as the Roma and Sinti Genocide Remembrance Day. 74 years ago, on the night of the 2nd to the 3rd of August, the German liquidated in the Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp so called family camp for the Gypsies (Zigeunerfamilienlager). About 4.3 thousand children, women and men, the last Roma prisoners in the camp, were murdered in the gas chambers at that time. Main commemorative events took place within the premises of former German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz II-Birkenau.

Pseudo-medical experiments carried out on the prisoners of German Nazi concentration camps and the consequences of imprisonment in those camps to inmates' health was the main topics of the international conference "Medical Review – Auschwitz: Medicine Behind the Barbed Wire". It took place in Cracow on 9 May 2018.