President Pahor at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum: I will do my best to finally open a joint permanent exhibition on our internees here

The President of the Republic of Slovenia Borut Pahor is on an official visit to the Republic of Poland, where he is hosted by the President of the Republic of Poland Andrzej Duda.

As part of the last day of his visit, the Slovenian President visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, where he was received by the director of the museum, Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywinski and the director general of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation Wojciech Soczewica.


Photo: Matjaž Klemenc/UPRS

The President of the Republic visited the museum complex and the premises of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, as well as the premises intended for an exhibition dedicated to the successor states of the former Yugoslavia. He was made conversant with the progress of the renovation work on Block 17, where a permanent exhibition on Slovenian internees will be set up.

A few days ago, at the proposal of President Pahor, the Government adopted an initiative to conclude an agreement to finance the re-establishment of a joint permanent exhibition in Block 17 of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. The President of the Republic welcomed this as an important step in the efforts to appropriately commemorate Slovenian internees in this concentration camp and said that he would personally advocate for the agreement to be supported by the other successor states and for the permanent exhibition to be set up as soon as possible. The director of the museum, Dr. Piotr Cywinski, added that, 25 years after the end of the war on the territory of the former Yugoslavia, this would be an important and inspiring message.


Photo: Matjaž Klemenc/UPRS

The first permanent exhibition on the suffering of Yugoslav internees was set up in 1963. The exhibition space, known as the Yugoslav Pavilion, occupied the first floor of Block 17 in Auschwitz. After years of disagreements and unsuccessful attempts to regulate the relations and rights between the successor states to the former Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, the Yugoslav National Pavilion was finally closed in 2009, and the countries have been trying to re-establish a joint exhibition on the fate of Yugoslav internees in the museum complex ever since.

A total of 2,342 internees from Slovenia were imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz, of whom 1,331 died there. (The total number of victims of the Holocaust during the Second World War is approximately six million.) Today, on the site of the Auschwitz II concentration camp, a museum has been set up that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has inscribed on the World Heritage Site list as reminder to future generations.

During today's visit to the former concentration camp, the President of the Republic laid a wreath at the memorial plaque, which as of 2008 also bears an inscription in Slovenian.

President Pahor attended the commemoration ceremonies on the 70th and 75th anniversaries of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, inviting former Slovenian internees to join his delegation both times. On these occasions, many of them returned for the first time to the place where they suffered so greatly decades ago.


Photo: Matjaž Klemenc/UPRS