Auschwitz Museum open to public from Monday

The Auschwitz Museum, located on the memorial site of the notorious WW2 Auschwitz German Nazi death camp in south Poland, will reopen to the public on Monday after several months under lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the museum announced on Thursday.

Museum spokesperson Bartosz Bartyzel said the reopening was not expected to bring visitor figures back to the pre-pandemic level, as schools, which account for a large percentage of the museum's public, will remain closed.

Bartyzel added that the museum was also not expecting large numbers of foreign visitors owing to continuing border restrictions.

In its 2020 annual report, the museum noted an enormous drop in revenue owing to a 161-day lockdown period. The report said that visitor numbers in 2020 had crashed to just over half a million from 2.32 million in 2019.

Established in 1940 during the German occupation of Poland, the Auschwitz concentration camp became the epicentre of the Holocaust. At least 1.1 million people, mainly Jews, but also Poles, Roma people and Soviet prisoners of war perished in the camp until its liberation by the Red Army in January 1945.