Auschwitz Modernization

The huge volume of traffic to the site that has served as memorial for 51 years meant that renovation was long overdue. "More than a million people visit the museum every year, and that means the first floor beams in the Auschwitz blocks won't hold up for long," Cywinski told reporters.

The stairs leading up to the exhibits have eroded over the years. They are housed in the original camp's former cell blocks. The camp was set up by the Nazis on a former Polish army barracks, not far from the southern town of Oswiecim.

New concept marks a change of approach

Cywinski announced that the International Auschwitz Council in Warsaw had unanimously approved plans to draw up a new concept for the museum, which would be put to survivors, historians, conservationists and religious leaders. The decision to renovate and actively preserve the remains of the camp marks a change in the long-standing approach to maintaining the site.

The site was left in the state the Allies found it when they liberated the camp. In an effort to cover up their atrocities, the Nazis had blown up the gas chambers before fleeing the camp as the Soviet Red Army advanced into Poland. The rubble was left so. This was a decision made in the early years of Communist rule but the director believes it is time for a change.

"First set up in the 1950s, the exhibits are old," he said. "New exhibits must take into account not only the historical knowledge acquired over the years, but also new means of organizing the museum." He argued that the Auschwitz exhibition was dated by comparison with the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem and the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C.

Austerity is a message

Cywinski insisted, however, that the renovation work would respect the memory of what had taken place. "Auschwitz will retain its simplicity. Its very austerity is a message," he stated.

At Auschwitz's nearby annex, the Birkenau death camp, walls will be constructed around the ruins of the gas chambers and adjoining crematoria to prevent them from sinking into the ground. These were purpose-built by the Nazis to allow them more systematically to carry out the "Final Solution" -- the extermination of Europe's Jews.

The first trainload of prisoners, mostly Polish resistance fighters, arrived at Auschwitz in June 1940. The camp quickly gained a reputation for torture and mass shootings. Construction of Birkenau began in 1941, and the deadly annex became fully functional two years later.

Many of the 1.1 million people documented to have died at Auschwitz-Birkenau were Jews, but Roma and Sinti, Soviet prisoners of war, Polish political prisoners, homosexuals, members of the clergy and others were also murdered there. Those who were not killed in the gas chambers died from overwork, starvation and disease.

Courage and solidarity to be honored by new exhibits

Cywinski said that the renovated museum would include a number of new exhibits, including ones which examine the world's silence and the lack of efforts to halt the Nazis' extermination of millions of people, as well as one about the Sonderkommando Revolt of autumn 1944. This squad of Jewish prisoners had the task of emptying the gas chambers and burning the bodies of the dead. One group rebelled, blowing up a crematorium and killing three guards. Several hundred prisoners were able to escape but most were then recaptured and killed. The "rebels" were publicly hanged.

"We want young people who visit to go away with not only a picture of the Holocaust as the greatest tragedy of humanity, but also of what was positive -- the heroism of the victims, and their mutual support and solidarity," Cywinski said.