Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (Polish: Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau) is a memorial place in Auschwitz and includes both concentration camps of Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau. It is devoted to the memorial of the murders in both camps during World War II. The museum performrs several tasks, amongst them is the research about the holocaust of the national socialists.
The Museum
On July 2nd, 1947, the museum was founded by resolution of the Polish parliament. The area covers 191 hectars, twenty of them in Auschwitz I and 171 in Auschwitz II.
Since 1979 the former concentration camp belongs to the World Cultural Heritage and more than 25 million people have visited the museum.
The areas of remembrance are: Auschwitz I, the camp Birkenau (Auschwitz II), the train ramp between Auschwitz and Birkenau, which was used as a "debarkation-stop" between 1942–1944. The three kilometres between Auschwitz and Birkenau are within walking distance. The museum is situated in several original buildings.
The number of visitors has been increasing year by year and travellers - in 2006 more than 1 million people from 94 different countries - from Poland (341.000), USA (96.000), Great Britain (57.200), Italy (51.000), Germany (50.200), France (39.100), Israel (37.200), South Corea (35.400), Norway (30.600) and Spain (23.300) have visited the museum.
History
After the Soviet Union handed over the camp to Poland in 1947, the parliament declared the area to a museum on July 2nd, 1947. Simultaneously the first exhibition in the baracks was opened.
On the occasion of the seventh anniversary of the first deportation of Polish captives to Auschwitz, the exhibition was revised under assistance of former inmates. Though, this exhibition was influenced by the Cold War and next to pictures of Jewish ghettos , photos of slums in the USA were presented.
After Stalin's death, a new exhibition was planned in 1955, which is basically still vaild today. In 1959 every nation who had victims in Auschwitz received the right to present an own exhibition. On the other hand victims like homosexuals, Jehova's Witnesses, Sinti and Roma and Yeniche people did not receive these rights. The state of Israel was also refused the allowance for an own exhibition as the murdered Jews in Auschwitz were not citicens of Israel. In April 1968 the Jewish exhibition was opened - designed by Andrzej Szczypiorski. A scandal happened in 1979 when Pope John Paul II held a mass in Birkenau and called the camp a Golgotha of our times.
In 1962 a prevention zone around the museum in Birkenau and in 1977 one around the museum in Auschwitz was established in order to contain the historical condition of the camp. These zones were confirmed by the Polish parliament in 1999.
In 1967 the first big memorial monument was inaugurated and in the 90s the first information boars were set up.
The National Exhibitions
Since 1960 the so-called "national exhibitions" are located in the former concentration camp Auschwitz I. Most of them were renewed from time to time, for example those of Belgium, France, Netherlands, Slovakia, Czech Republic and the former Soviet Union. The German exhibition which was made by the former GDR has not been renewed since then.
The first national exhibition of the Soviet Union was opened in 1961 and renewed in 1977 and 1985. In 2003 the Russion organizing committee suggested to present a completely new exhibition. The Soviet part of the museum was closed, but the reopening was delayed as there were differences in the questions of the territorial situation of the Soviet Union between 1939 and 1941. The question of the territories of the Baltic countries, the Eastern Poland and parts of Rumania could not be solved.
In 1978 Austria opened it's exhibition, presenting itself as a victim of national socialism. This onesided view motivated the Austrian political scientist Andreas Maislinger to work in the museum within the Action Reconciliation Service for Peace (ARSP) in 1980/81. Later he founded the Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service. The Austrian federal president Rudolf Kirchschläger had advised Maislinge, that as a young Austrian he does not need to atone anything in Auschwitz. Due to this disapproving attitude of the official Austrian representation, the Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service could not be launched before September 1992.
Weblinks
- World Cultural Heritage UNESCO-Beschreibung
- Website of the museum