AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU

The Perpetual Fund created and managed by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation currently includes 23 countries. The total financial declarations amount to ca. €100 million of which almost €47 million has already been contributed to the Foundation. The Foundation had its fifth session at the Chancellery of the Prime Minister in Warsaw. During the meeting two new members of the Council were appointed: Henryk Wujec and Wojciech Soczewica.

The scenario of the new main exhibition at the Auschwitz Memorial Site was the main topic of the meeting of the International Auschwitz Council. Two-day meeting in Auschwitz on 17-18 June was chaired by Professor Władysław Bartoszewski. During the Council also staff awards ceremony was held at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.

More than 120 educators, teachers, representatives of non-governmental organisations dealing with human rights and journalists took part in the fourth edition of the National Conference of "Words in the service of hatred" Auschwitz and the Holocaust against the background of crimes of genocide in the twentieth century, which was held 13-15 June at the International Youth Meeting Centre and the Auschwitz Memorial Site.

On 14 June, the directors and staff of the Auschwitz Memorial Site, along with Dyonizy Lechowicz, a former prisoner of Auschwitz and Mauthausen-Gusen, laid a wreath at the Wall of Death by block 11 to commemorate the National Day of Remembrance for Victims of the Nazi Concentration Camps. 73 years ago, the German Nazis transported a group of 728 Polish political prisoners from the prison in Tarnów and sentenced them to the newly built concentration camp of Auschwitz.

On 13 June in block 27 of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, a new national exhibition entitled “Shoah” was opened. The ceremony was attended by, among others, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Polish Minister of Culture and National Heritage Bogdan Zdrojewski. The exhibition was prepared by the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem. During the solemn inauguration of the exhibition, the director of the Institute, Avner Shalev, was honoured with the “Light of Remembrance” award, which was granted by the Museum for his outstanding contribution to the education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust. Guests of honour of the ceremony were Holocaust survivors, including Israel Meir Lau, former Chief Rabbi of Israel.

In Berlin, a ceremony was held for the transfer to the State Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau of a bus donated by Volkswagen AG and the International Auschwitz Committee. The new vehicle will transport visitors free of charge between the former camps of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau, which are at a distance of more than 2 km.