POLISH authorities responsible for maintaining the Auschwitz extermination camp as a memorial to the million-plus people murdered there warn it is slipping into ruin.
An appeal has gone out to the international community for funds to keep the site of the Birkenau extermination centre – separate from the rest of the camp complex – open as a place of homage and remembrance.
Jaroslaw Mensfelt, spokesman for the
museum on the site, said: "Without outside help, Poland could have trouble retaining Auschwitz as a memorial site."
According to the director of the memorial, Piotr Cywinski, some 62.5 million euros (£50 million) is needed for repairs. The budget the museum gets annually from the Polish government is less than £2 million a year while another £2 million is earned from the sales of books, fees for tours and parking.
Mr Cywinski said that the international community, particularly the EU, should "share the burden" of keeping up the memorial.
Germany gave £5 million in the Nineties to upgrade barracks and install heating in some rooms.
But time has taken its toll on what was the prime killing centre for the Nazis in the Second World War.
Between 1.2 and 1.5 million European, Balkan and Russian Jews were murdered in the gas chambers of the Birkenau complex.
After the war, a monument and museum was built on the site of the camps. Interest in the monuments has grown in recent years, with a record 1.2 million people visiting last year.
Auschwitz, near Krakow, was also a slave labour centre, with inmates not "selected" for death put to work in factories producing goods for the German war effort.
When the Russians liberated it in January 1945 they discovered mountains of valuables, hair, gold teeth, spectacles and thousands and thousands of childrens' dolls – all taken from those who were murdered there.
Since the fall of communism it has become a place of pilgrimage for people from all lands, but particularly Jews from Israel.
The full article contains 339 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
