7 December 2006
The International Auschwitz Council has accepted a plan by the Auschwitz Museum to update its exhibitions. The displays of thousands of victims' belongings has not been changed a great deal for more than five decades. The council also agreed to prevent what remains of the former camp's gas chambers from deteriorating further. More than 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were murdered at Auschwitz, a Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland. The move to maintain the site and change the exhibitions has proven controversial among some Holocaust survivors, who do not want to see the camp sanitized for the sake of tourism. Piotr Cywinski, the Auschwitz Museum director appointed in September, wants to make the exhibitions focus more on individual victims' stories while continuing to reveal the collective suffering at Auschwitz. The International Auschwitz Council is comprised of scholars, religious leaders, historians and museum experts from around the world.
