The Auschwitz Museum Is In Need of Major Repairs

Monday, 11 August 2008 22:46

AUSCHWITZ, Poland—The Auschwitz Museum at the site of the former Nazi death camp in Auschwitz is calling on the international community to provide funding, saying it can't afford to carry out urgent major repair work. The museum's current budget is about 20 million zloty ($9.5 million) a year, with half coming from the Polish government and half from revenue generated from book sales and guided tours

"It's time for other governments to take their turn, especially Germany," the museum's deputy director, Krystyna Oleksy, told Bloomberg. "Poland is hardly one of the world's richest countries and it has borne the brunt of the funding for decades now."

Oleksy declined to tell Bloomberg how much was needed for repairs and conservation work on the camp's 150 buildings, including former barracks and remains of the gas chambers, but the regional Polish newspaper Dziennik Polski reported that the museum needs about 200 million zloty ($95 million) to carry out this work and update the permanent exhibition, which has been in place since 1955.

Inside one of the barracks, some sayings of George Santayna that made this editor think about the future after the horror things that happened in the place:
"The one who does not remember the history is bound to live through it again."

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