The Auschwitz barracks due to go on display
One of the most important exhibits in Holocaust commemoration will shortly be opened to the public. Curators of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp museum have announced that the barracks from that death camp which was returned to Poland three years ago has undergone renovation and will soon be opened to visitors.
After negotiations between the government in Warsaw and the Washington administration which were guardians of the exhibit that housed the building in the U.S. for two decades, part of the original barracks in Auschwitz was returned to its place in Auschwitz proper.
The Americans wanted to extend the lease but a law was passed in Poland imposing a five year limit on exhibits loaned to other countries, on the basis of which Poland demanded its return. The U.S. and Poland kept up negotiations, at the end of which the Holocaust Museum in Washington agreed to return this historic display to Poland.
The barracks which was built in the Birkenau camp housed Jewish families transported from the Therisenstadt ghetto. This operated as a camp for those families from the end of 5703 (1943) till the middle of 5704. Some 46,000 Jews were then shipped from that district. 20,000 of them arrived at the camp while 26,000 were spread out to other sections of Auschwitz or were sent directly to the gas chambers. This barracks also housed the camp's hospital.
The curator of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Holocaust Museum in Washington, Piotr Chayunisky, said, "These barracks were originally stables but the Nazis converted them to housing quarters for the inmates. Over 400 prisoners were compressed inside on wooden shelves serving as bunk beds."
The attempt to preserve the appearance of the barracks today after the war is part of the Polish determination to safeguard the authenticity of the largest Holocaust Museum in the world, said Chayunisky.
