English Section

Auschwitz museum to reopen on July 1 after COVID-19 closure

18.06.2020 11:00
The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in the southern Polish city of Oświęcim has announced it will reopen to visitors on July 1 after more than three months of coronavirus closure.
Entrance to the former Auschwitz death camp with the infamous Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Sets You Free) sign.
Entrance to the former Auschwitz death camp with the infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work Sets You Free) sign. Photo: PAP/Andrzej Grygiel

The museum, which preserves the site of the former Nazi German death camp, on Wednesday restarted its reservation system for individual visitors and group tours, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.

Tourists will again be able to enter the memorial site from the start of next month, but "the visiting regulations have been adapted to the new sanitary requirements," according to the museum’s director, Piotr Cywiński.

Under new sanitary guidelines, groups of no more than 15 will be allowed to tour the site. The total number of those allowed per day will also be reduced.

Visitors will have to keep a safe distance from one another and wear face coverings when touring the museum.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp operated in German-occupied southern Poland between May 1940 and January 1945.

It was the largest of the German Nazi concentration and death camps.

More than 1.1 million people, mostly European Jews, as well as Poles, Roma, Soviet POWs and people of many other nationalities, perished at the camp before it was liberated by Soviet soldiers on January 27, 1945.

The Auschwitz museum opened in 1947.

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, donors around the world have responded to an appeal for financial help from the museum, which closed to visitors as part of a lockdown on March 12.

Donations can be made via the donate.auschwitz.org website.

(gs/pk)

Source: IAR