Warsaw, Poland – Germany is donating $87 million to a new endowment for Auschwitz-Birkenau to preserve barracks, gas chambers and other evidence of Nazi crimes at the former death camp.
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The donation is half the amount experts believe is needed to preserve the camp.
The German pledge, announced in response to appeals from the Polish government, which has borne most of the cost of preserving the remains of the camp that Nazi Germany set up in occupied Poland during World War II.
Half of the money will come from the German federal government and the other half from the German states.
“This is an expression of our historical responsibility,” said German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle.
The money goes to the Perpetual Fund of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, an endowment set up this year as a way to fund conservation projects. The aim is to preserve the sprawling site, which stands as a testimony of the atrocities inflicted on Jews, Gypsies, Polish political prisoners and others, and which today draws about 1 million visitors per year.
“This is all the more urgent a task because there are fewer and fewer former prisoners and eyewitnesses to the events of the times of the Second World War among us,” said Piotr Cywinski, the director of the Auschwitz memorial site.
I simply do not understand the term “holocaust denier”. Germany says I did it. We killed 6 million jews using the most barbaric means. They admit killing the others as well. What are these deniers saying, that Germany says they killed the jews but they are lying.
The German Chancellor or the press should ask this question of Irans dictator.
Good point mate but there will always be deniers when when things are as clear as black on white. For example, we still have people who believe the world is flat or princess diana is still alive somewhere.. But good on you germany for preserving the worst what you did to mankind and not covering up something that people could one day believe that the holcaust was and is the bigest conspiracy in history.