AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU

On 16-27 July 2017, the International Centre for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum organised another edition of the seminar “Auschwitz in the collective consciousness in Poland and the world. The role and significance of the Auschwitz-Birkenau memory for Jews and Poles” addressed to Israeli educators. 18 persons attended the seminar - guides and employees of institutions that deal with the topic of the Holocaust.

The Franciscan priest Maximilian Maria Kolbe was killed 76 years ago in the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz. A solemn Mass was celebrated on the anniversary of this event at Block 11, which housed the prison camp where the clergy was murdered. Several hundred-people attended the ceremony, including former prisoners of Auschwitz. The Mass was presided over by the auxiliary bishop of Bielsko-Żywiec diocese, Piotr Greger.

The conservation project has been completed on securing the northern and western wall of the ruins of the gas chamber and crematorium III undressing rooms on the site of the former Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp. The works were financed with funds from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation.

73 years ago, on the night of 2 to 3 August 1944, the Germans liquidated the so-called family camp for Gypsies (Zigeunerfamilienlager) in Auschwitz II Birkenau. At that time, nearly 3 thousand children, women and men the last Roma prisoners of the camp were murdered in the gas chambers. In connection with these tragic events, August 2 is commemorated as the Roma and Sinti Genocide Remembrance Day.

On the 73rd anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, the director of the Museum Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywiński paid tribute to its heroes and victims – including the nearly 13,000 residents of the capital deported by the Germans to the Auschwitz camp. At exactly 17:00 – i.e. the „W” hour commencing the insurrectionary fights, he laid a wreath at the Death Wall in the courtyard of Block 11 at the premises of the former Auschwitz 1 camp.

The More I Know the Less I Understand is a joint publication of International Centre for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust and The University of British Columbia in Vancouver, which includes selected essays of students who participated in three editions of the research seminar “Witnessing Auschwitz – Conflicting Stories and Memories” organised by the Auschwitz Memorial.