Record number of visitors at Auschwitz Museum
PR dla Zagranicy
John Beauchamp
20.12.2014 14:00
The Auschwitz Museum has estimated that over 1.5 million people will have visited the former Nazi German concentration camp by the end of 2014.
Auschwitz-Birkenau Photo: Agnieszka Skieterska
“According to our calculations, the number of visitors has already beaten the previous record,” museum spokesman Bartosz Bartyzel said, adding that the Museum has attracted more than a million people for eight years running.
Bartyzel added that the increasing number of visitors to the camp may be due to a number of anniversaries which took place in 2014, as well as the upcoming 70th anniversary of the liberation of the camp by Soviet forces on 27 January 2015.
The previous record was set in 2012, when 1.43 million people visited the site. In 2001, the number of visitors did not reach 500,000 and it was not until 2008 that the million-mark was broken.
The Auschwitz concentration camp was built by the Nazis in occupied Poland in 1940, but it was not until 1942 that Auschwitz-Birkenau became functional. It is believed that around 1.1 million people died in the camp complex, mostly Jews, but also Poles, Roma gypsies, and Soviet POWs among others. (jb)
Source: PAP