Int’l honour for Auschwitz museum head

Piotr Cywiński, the director of the Auschwitz Museum at the site of the former Nazi German concentration camp in Poland, has been included in a list of the 50 most influential individuals whose creativity, passion and drive have helped shape and improve the museum industry.

Piotr Cywiński.

Photo: PAP/Łukasz Gągulski

The list has been compiled by Blooloop, the world’s most read news source for museum professionals.  

Cywiński has been included in the all-important "The Power 10" list.

Director of @AuschwitzMuseum Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywiński was included in "The Power 10" list of the 50 most influential people in the world of museums created by @Blooloop.

Read more: https://t.co/ux0g9wILMg pic.twitter.com/MjXr86UIY5

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) February 16, 2022

This prestigious group also includes Ngaire Blankenberg, director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington; Laurence des Cars, the first female director of the Louvres museum in Paris; and Tim Reeve, deputy director of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

A professional historian, Cywiński is a graduate of the University of Humanities in Strasbourg, France and of the Catholic University of Lublin in Poland. In 2001, he obtained his PhD from the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences. In 2006, at the age of 34, he took over as director of the Auschwitz Museum.

More than 1.1 million people were killed by the Germans at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II.

The victims were mostly European Jews, but also Poles, Roma, Soviet POWs and prisoners of other nationalities.

(mk/gs)