Poland to donate €10,000,000 to Auschwitz perpetual fund.

The Polish government is to contribute 10 million euros for the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation which is to oversee the conservation and maintenance work at the site of the former Nazi German concentration camp in southern Poland.

A draft bill which is to approve the donation has had its first reading in the parliamentary commission for culture and the media. Its chairwoman, Iwona Śledzińska-Katarasińska, said that preserving Auschwitz, a site of unique importance, is of utmost siginificance not only for Poland and Europe, but also for the whole world.

Chairman of the Auschwitz Foundation, former Auschwitz prisoner Władysław Bartoszewski, called on deputies to support the draft irrespective of party differences. ‘Such a non-partisan gesture would be appreciated by both the Germans and Jews, showing that all the parties in Poland, from the right to the left, share the view that the site of the former camp should be preserved as a testimony for the whole mankind’, he said.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, which was established in January 2009, hopes to create a Perpetuity Fund of 120 million euros by 2015 to ensure the consolidation, restoration and long-term maintenance of the camp site.

Several countries have already pledged to contribute 85 million euros, the most sizeable contribution (60 million euros) having been offered by Germany. The United States, Austria, Great Britain and Israel have also contributed to the fund.

The site of the Auschwitz camp extends over an area of almost 200 hectares and comprises 155 buildings, most which are badly in need of repair. The conservation projects are also to cover the camp’s archives, documents and objects in the museum collection. Over 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, perished at Auschwitz.

And not before time.

From July 2011, the Italian exhibition at the Auschwitz Memorial is closed to visitors.

Not educational in any way, it failed to meet the basic requirements for national exhibitions as set by the International Auschwitz Council, which have been in force since the 1990s.

The Italian exhibition, opened in 1980, was made up of a ribbon of fabric in the form of a spiral, hung with paintings intended to represent various incidents from the history of Italy in the 1930s and 1940s. The designers stated that the final section was supposed to be an apotheosis of positive colors signifying victory over the time of contempt and persecution.

This type of exhibition can be categorized as art for art’s sake and would be referred to in a gallery of contemporary art as an installation or performance. This type of art is not presented on the grounds of the former Auschwitz camp, where the educational dimension is connected with remembrance, education, and making the younger generation aware of the tragedy of the victims of the Shoah and the concentration camps, as well as encouraging people to reflect upon their personal responsibility for the world around them and its future.

The organizers of the closed exhibition, the Italian ANED association, have been reminded regularly over the years about the fact that the exhibition did not conform to the rules established by the International Auschwitz Council. Positive talks are underway with the Italian government about creating a new narrative-historical exhibition in the future that will meet the requirements set by the International Auschwitz Council and the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.