Memoria [EN] No. 25 (10/2019) | Page 51

- Guernica was the first town so brutally and senselessly attacked by the German air force, two years before the outbreak of World War II. The city was practically swept from the surface of the Earth - as was the case several years later with Warsaw. The Spaniards did not take part in the Second World War, but war itself is a universal experience: with victims, innocent people suffering, terror and violence," said Ambassador Marzena Adamczyk.

- The Auschwitz-Birkenau camp is the most tragic and nightmarish symbol of the Second World War. It contains something akin to the essence of evil. Therefore, I will always support the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, which is the leader in the sphere of memory policy and showing what we must prevent from happening," she added.

The exhibition is presented in the anti-aircraft shelter building dating back to 1936, located in the former Astra ammunition factory. Thirty exhibition boards were placed inside, explaining the reasons for setting up the camp as a tool of terror against the Polish population and the political context of its functioning. The exhibition explains how the camp system developed and why it was transformed into a mass extermination centre for Jews.

It also describes the living conditions of camp prisoners, starvation, slave labour, terror, punishment system and execution. Separate boards deal with the fate of women and children, the extermination of the Roma, or the tragedy of Soviet prisoners of war. The exhibition also tells the history of the resistance movement in Auschwitz, escapes, as well as the support given to prisoners by the residents of the Oświęcim Land.

The exhibition is presented in Spanish. An audio guide is also being prepared in Basque, Catalan, French and English. The project partner Asociación Pro Tradición y Cultura Europea assumes that copies of the exhibition will be shown simultaneously in several places in Spain. The exhibition is accompanied by a program of workshops for schoolchildren, developed in cooperation with the International Centre for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust.