“The period of the pandemic has proved exceptionally difficult for the Auschwitz Memorial, as it has been closed to visitors since 12 March and hence deprived of its primary source of financing,” the UNESCO World Heritage site said on its website earlier this month.
“Therefore, we wish to ask everyone for whom the preservation of memory is important for financial support to allow us to continue with numerous educational, research, exhibition and publishing projects,” the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum added.
The museum, which preserves the site of the former Nazi German death camp, also said that “thanks to special support from the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage,” it had “managed to maintain continuity of the institution,” but needed additional funds to ensure “the implementation of ... statutory operations.”
The museum said at the weekend it has so far received over PLN 500,000 (EUR 112,500, USD 126,600) worth of donations from more than 2,200 people all over the world. It thanked all those sending funds for their “solidarity and generosity.”
Museum Director Piotr Cywiński was quoted as saying that “people from Poland, Europe and the whole world have donated funds.”
He added that the museum was trying to ride out the COVID-19 crisis using an increased subsidy from the Polish culture ministry and funds from the government’s Anti-Crisis Shield measure, in addition to funds from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, which Cywiński said “has doubled its contribution this year.”
The museum plans to reopen at the beginning of next month, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp operated in German-occupied southern Poland between May 1940 and January 1945.
It was the largest of the German Nazi concentration and death camps.
More than 1.1 million people, mostly European Jews, as well as Poles, Roma, Soviet POWs and people of many other nationalities, perished at the camp before it was liberated by Soviet soldiers on January 27, 1945.
The Auschwitz museum opened in 1947.
Donations can be made via the donate.auschwitz.org website.
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Source: IAR