Auschwitz Jewish Center

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Auschwitz Jewish Center (Polish: Centrum Zydowskie w Oswiecimiu) is a memorial for the victims of the Holocaust. The center is situated in Oswiecim, Poland, also known as Auschwitz.

Once, this village had a large Jewish community. In 1939, more than the half of the population was Jewish. Over more than 400 years, the city was influenced by Jewish life, Jewish culture and synagogues, Oswiecim had 20 different synagogues. However, shortly after Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939, came the building of the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. Everything "Jewish" virtually disappeared out of this region during World War II. After the war, a Soviet-aligned government was put in place in Poland. As communist ideaology is atheistic, there was little or no effort to support religion. As a result, no Jews are known to live today in Auschwitz.

500,000 people visit the former concentration camps annually. However, many of them are only interested in the WWII era and are little aware of the historic Jewish culture in the region. In fact, part of the land that the Auschwitz concentration camp was built used to be owned by a Jewish family. In 2000 the Auschwitz Jewish Center's doors opened with the goal to show the variety of this religion in that area and offering Auschwitz-Birkenau's visitors information about the Auschwitz before 1939.

The Jewish Center is open for everybody, Jews and non-Jews. It has two missions:

Enable everybody to learn about the Jewish culture through exhibits, lectures and other educational work.
Create a place where visitors of Auschwitz-Birkenau could remember the Jewish victims.

The Jewish Center consists of several institutions supporting the goals named above:

Synagogue, which is the only one (from roughly 20) that survived WWII.
Permanent Exhibit, which shows the former Jewish life.
Library, mainly for genealogical research.
Temporary Exhibits

The Auschwitz Jewish Center is a partner organization of the Austrian Association for Service Abroad under the program Austrian Holocaust Memorial Service.

External links

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