“According to our estimates, the attendance will reach around 1.8 million visitors by the end of the year", spokesperson Bartosz Bartyzel said on Saturday.
The Auschwitz Museum remains one of the most visited sites in Poland. The record year in this regard was 2019, when 2.32 million people made a visit to the memorial. However, this number dropped sharply due to the pandemic in 2020 when attendance plummeted to around half a million visits.
When the levels began to rebound around 2020, a shift in visitor provenance was noted during that period with a higher percentage of local rather than foreign guests.
"In our view, this was primarily driven by concerns about the war [in Ukraine] taking place near Poland's borders", Bartyzel explained.
Last year closed with a total of 1.67 million visitors, signaling a gradual recovery in attendance.
More than 1.1 million people, mainly Jews, were killed by the Germans at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II.
Nearly half of the 140-150 thousand Poles deported to the camp died, along with Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, and others.
The Germans established Auschwitz in 1940 to imprison Poles. Auschwitz II-Birkenau, built two years later, became a site of Jewish genocide.
In 1947, a museum was established on the former Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau grounds. The camp was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979.
(mo)
Source: PAP