Images in the article: Bartosz Bartyzel
year. He has also created the place considered by international experts as a model, respecting highest commemoration standards, expressing the rules of authenticity, preserving the integrality of artifacts and archive collections as well as international cooperation, according to best practices of UNESCO, which in 1979 inscribed Auschwitz-Birkenau on world heritage list”.
“Also thanks to the effort of Director Piotr Cywiński as well as the late Minister Tomasz Merta, in June 2007 UNESCO confirmed the wording of the Museum’s official name, matching the historical truth: Auschwitz-Birkenau. German Nazi concentration and extermination camp”, wrote Minister Sellin
In his thank-you speech, Director Piotr Cywiński said: “The fact that this is a French order of merit is very important for me as France received me together with my family very friendly in the hard period of the 1980s, when the face of Europe was changing and the communism declining. Observing the collapse of communism from the perspective of such journals as Le Figaro or Le Monde constituted for me, a teenager at that time, a very important lesson, which I strongly appreciate after all those years”.