Fifty thousand persons attended the formal dedication yesterday at Oswiecim of a museum on the site of the notorious death camp. Premier Jozef Cyrankiewicz and several other members of the government addressed the ceremonies.
Cyrankiewicz said that Oswiecim “will remain a monument to the sufferings caused by fascism and will help mankind to remember and prevent a recurrence of such tragedies.” Religious services were conducted by Catholic, Protestant and Jewish elergymen and Kaddish was recited for the 1,500,000 Jews murdered at Oswiecim.
The crowds attending the ceremony marched to the nearby Birkenau camp where there remain gas chambers and crematoriums in which more than 4,000,000 people were put to death. Five hundred Oswiecim survivors were present, as well as several Jewish delegations, including that of the Central Committee of the Jewish Communities of Poland. The blue-white Zionist flag was prominently displayed.
The museum contains numerous relics including many talithim, locks of hair of murdered women, children’s clothing and shoes, trunks with names of Jews from sixteen European countries, and many other similar objects.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
