POLISH COMMUNITY COUNCIL OF AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND INC.
 
MEDIA RELEASE
24 January 2005

Auschwitz Liberation Sixtieth Anniversary

This year, January 27, marks the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of the notorious German Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz – Birkenau, where the highest number of civilians was put to death during World War II.

To the world at large, Auschwitz has become synonymous with genocide and particularly with the Jewish Holocaust.

Due to its location on occupied Polish territory, Auschwitz is often erroneously, and to Polish Australians, offensively referred to in the Australian media, as the “Polish Concentration Camp”.

Auschwitz was initially established in May 1940, by the occupying German forces, as a Concentration Camp for Polish political prisoners. It was a German Nazi Concentration Camp.

In 1942, SS and Gestapo leader, Heinrich Himmler, chose Auschwitz as a suitable place to centralise Nazi  Germany’s murderous policy of “final solution” of European Jewry, at the same time exterminating large sections of  the Polish population, Gypsies and many other nationalities.

Auschwitz was chosen for its convenience and ease of access.  Most of the pre war Jewish population lived in Poland. 3.5 million or 10 per cent of Poland’s population was Jewish. That is more than half of those who perished in the Holocaust. Auschwitz was also the most centrally located (equidistant) place from all European countries and easily accessible by rail.

When this “facility” proved inadequate to handle the number of Jews, the Germans constructed a much larger camp 3 kilometres  from Auschwitz, at a place called Birkenau. It could hold 100,000 prisoners at a time and was known as Auschwitz II, while the original camp was Auschwitz I.   

In 1947 the Polish Government established Auschwitz as a Museum financed by the Ministry of Culture and Arts. Now it is also on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.

Until the year 2000, 25 million people visited Auschwitz. Initially they were from all over Poland, but the numbers of visitors from all parts of the world increase every year.

Auschwitz is now, without a doubt, the world’s largest cemetery. There are no marked graves – in fact there are no graves at all. Bones and ashes of hundreds of thousands of victims are scattered over hundreds of hectares. They belong to people of all races and all creeds. They rest there together in perfect harmony: a silent, yet powerful witness to the evil futility of persecution, racism and discrimination of any kind.


For more information on Auschwitz see Attachment Aus – Birk.


Zbigniew (George) Sudull, Spokesperson
Polish Community Council of Australia and New Zealand
Tel. (07) 3366 3466
Email sudull@uqconnect.net