History
After the Soviet Union handed over the camp to Poland in 1947, the parliament declared the area to be a museum on July 2, 1947. Simultaneously the first exhibition in the barracks was opened.
On the occasion of the seventh anniversary of the first deportation of Polish captives to camp Auschwitz, the exhibition was revised under assistance of former inmates. However, this exhibition was influenced by the Cold War and next to pictures of Jewish ghettos, photos of slums in the USA were presented.
After Stalin's death, a new exhibition was planned in 1955, which is basically still valid today. In 1959 every nation who had victims in Auschwitz received the right to present its own exhibition. However, victims like homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Sinti and Roma and Yeniche people did not receive these rights. The state of Israel was also refused the allowance for its own exhibition as the murdered Jews in Auschwitz were not citizens of Israel. In April 1968 the Jewish exhibition, designed by Andrzej Szczypiorski, was opened. A scandal occurred in 1979 when Pope John Paul II held a mass in Birkenau and called the camp a "Golgotha of our times".
In 1962 a prevention zone around the museum in Birkenau (and in 1977 one around the museum in Auschwitz) was established in order to maintain the historical condition of the camp. These zones were confirmed by the Polish parliament in 1999.
In 1967 the first big memorial monument was inaugurated and in the 90s the first information boards were set up.
Read more about this topic: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
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