New WWII museum to be set up

A deal to build the new museum was signed by Deputy Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło and Deputy Culture Minister Jarosław Sellin in Harmęże, southern Poland, at the Saint Maksymilian Centre, named for the Polish Catholic monk who died in place of another inmate at Auschwitz.

Poland’s National Day of Remembrance of Victims of German Nazi Concentration Camps is held on June 14, marking the anniversary of the first transport of more than 700 Polish political prisoners to the Auschwitz German Nazi Camp in 1940.

Wreaths were laid in front of the death wall at Auschwitz, where thousands of people were executed, and candles were lit at a school in Oświęcim, near the Auschwitz camp, under a plaque commemorating the first transport of prisoners to the camp.

The school’s basement had been used to hold Poles that were deported by the Nazis before the camp was ready to take in prisoners.

Official events were also held at the Museum of the Pawiak Prison in Warsaw, the site of the former Pawiak prison which was turned into a German Gestapo prison after Nazi’s occupied the Polish capital in 1939, and which later became part of the Nazi concentration-death camp system.

At midday, announcements were made at train stations in Warsaw, Kraków and other Polish cities, reminding passengers of the anniversary.

Marek Kuchciński, the speaker of the lower house of Polish parliament, said that "hatred was at the foundation of the Nazi ideology”.

“It is important that the memory of the victims … is never erased from people’s hearts and minds,” Kuchciński added. (vb)

Source: IAR, PAP