Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum: from commemoration to education

The Nazi death camp Auschwitz is one of the most well known sites of genocide in human history and the largest cemetery in the world. In this place, from 1940 to 1945 the Nazis murdered between 1.1 and 1.4 million poeple, mostly Jews, as well as Poles, gypsies, Soviet prisoners of war, and other people. Never before in human history were so many people murdered in such a planned and bureaucratic way. For Jews, the camp has become the symbol of the Holocaust. In 1945 a group of former political prisoners began to spread the idea of commemorating the victims of Auschwitz, and the State Museum was established for this purpose. Every year the memorial is visited by hundreds of thousands of people, mostly young people and their number is constantly increasing