In the second half of 1998 the Museum was seen by almost 330 thousand visitors comprising 172 thousand visitors from Poland and nearly 158 thousand from abroad. Young people numbering 112 thousand from Poland and 37 thousand from abroad made up 45% of the visitors. The visitors were taken round by 165 professional guides, including 75 foreign language speaking guides. During the whole of 1998 the Museum was seen by approximately 550 thousand visitors including 270 thousand of young people.

Among the prominent politicians who visited the Museum were:

- Reinhard Metz, President of the Parliament of the German State of Bremen;
- Javier Solana, Secretary General of NATO;
- Alberto Fujimori, President of Peru;
- Jorge Sampaio, President of Portugal;
- Rafael Eitan, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development of Israel.

During the second half of 1998 thirty film and TV crews have worked at the Museum.

The Archive collections received new important items, including:

- 177 original documents including letters and secret messages written by prisoners;
- 88 copies of original camp documents;
- 13 memoirs written by Auschwitz ex-prisoners;
- 19 accounts by ex-prisoners describing their camp experience.

The picture collections received, among others;

- 108 photographs of children and adolescents - victims of KL Auschwitz. The photographs were sent by ex-prisoners, their families and various institutions to Ms. Helena Kubica, who is preparing pictures for an album entitled "Dzieci w KL Auschwitz" (Children at KL Auschwitz).

The copying of microfilms containing KL Auschwitz documents, which were appropriated by the Red Army after the liberation and are currently kept at the Centre for Historical and Documentary Collections in Moscow, began. The entire material is recorded on 86 microfilms and contains mainly documents of the Main Waffen SS and Police Constructions Headquarters at KL Auschwitz.

In the second half of 1998 the Museum were given 705 new exhibits, the majority of which were of an historical nature. The most significant ones are:

- the suitcase with which Zygmunt Dzierlinski, KL Auschwitz prisoner No. 31011, arrived at the camp. After his death in the camp the German authorities returned the suitcase with his personal belongings to the family;
- 28 packs of medicines and vaccines, most of them against typhoid and scarlet fever, produced by the Behringwerke IG Farbenindustrie Aktiengesselschaft Leverkusen BAYER; some of them bearing a stamp of a government inspection dating from 1944;
- an arm-band with letters HKB made by Jewish female prisoners working at Standesamt und Krematorium Verwaltung for Alojzy Kleta, prisoner No. 3366, who worked at a camp sick-bay;
- two round fire-clay blocks with numbers 12065 and 9811. These discs were placed next to corpses burned in the crematoria to facilitate counting.

138 items were exhibited at various exhibitions in Poland. The leases of the exhibits lent to the Holocaust Museum in Washington and the Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz Memorial were extended.

The scope of conservation work is very wide and encompasses not only work connected with the conservation of the former camp buildings, but also all routine tasks like lawn mowing, tree care or keeping water drains in good condition. All this work needs significant funds. The Ronald Lauder Foundation from USA gives major support. On its initiative and thanks to active fund-raising by its representatives over $20 million has already been raised. It has also helped to obtain financial aid from German federal and state governments and the governments of Belgium and Luxembourg. The money was used for conservation work.

In general, the following amounts of money were spent on conservation work in 1998:
- PLN 598,000 - from the Museum budget;
- PLN 19,000 - from the Memorial Foundation for the Victims of Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp;
- PLN 667,000 - from the German States;
- PLN 401, 000 - from the governments of Belgium and Luxembourg.

The above funds were allocated to finance the following tasks:

Governments of German States. After completing the conservation work at Blocks 10, 11 and 26 (Auschwitz I) work was focused mainly on the reconstruction and adaptation of the "Sauna" building and on conservation of the fence surrounding the Auschwitz and Birkenau camp grounds. The work on the "Sauna", which covers two parallel aspects, (1) the general construction rehabilitation, conservation and fitting the building with a technical infrastructure and (2) designing and establishing a permanent exhibition, is processing slowly because of its complicated nature. Another major task accomplished through the governments of German States has been the conservation of the historical camp fences. It is especially difficult to preserve the fence posts which number more than 3,000 (!). Thus, specialised research was done into such a conservation scheme. It was tested on 30 posts. The results will be reported to an especially organised symposium, which is planned for April 1999.
Conservation work also took place at 8 guard towers at the former Auschwitz I camp and at 19 camp gates. The steel gate frames and wooden or brick posts also underwent renovation.

The Kingdom of Belgium and The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. The donation was used for the conservation of two wooden barracks and the roof of Block 5 at Auschwitz I.

The donation made by the Memorial Foundation for Victims of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp was used to cover, among other things, conservation and maintenance of vegetation.

Ministry of Culture and Arts financed the renovation of a former camp workshop, so-called parnik (steaming plant) located near the camp grounds, and a reserve Block 2 at Auschwitz I. The budget funds were also used to preserve historical inscriptions and drawings in Block 11 (Auschwitz I).

Employees of the Historical and Research Department answered over a 100 scientific enquiries and questions asked by private persons, researchers and institutions in Poland and abroad. Among others, the following enquiries were answered: a US Holocaust Research enquiry on the marking of twins who were victims of experiments, the Deutsches Brot-Museum of Ulm (Germany) enquiry about the camp bakeries and the bread supplies for prisoners and the Arxiu Municipal de Castellar del Valles (Spain) enquiry about Spanish prisoners in KL Auschwitz.

The Information Office provided over 1600 written answers to questions concerning he fate of prisoners of KL Auschwitz-Birkenau. Most often the questions were asked by families now living in USA and Israel whose relatives were imprisoned or killed in KL Auschwitz. The quantitative data confirms the increasing interest of families now living abroad in the fate of their relatives who had been camp prisoners.
Recently there has been an increasing correspondence about lawsuits to obtain compensation payments for those persons who were used during the war as forced labourers in various German factories.

In the second half of 1998 the library collection received 376 new items (books and journals) purchased, presented, or exchanged for the Museum's own publications. At the end of 1998 the library collections contained over 23,000 items.

Employees of the Museum published papers in various languages, including the following:
- on the Gravel Pit next to the Theatergebäude (A. Cyra);
- on the role of Auschwitz in the Nazi system of terror and the economy of the Third Reich (F. Piper);
- on Gypsy children in KL Auschwitz who were victims of medical experiments (H. Kubica);
- on the work of prisoners in KL Auschwitz III-Monowitz (P. Setkiewicz);
- on the works of art created by Marian Kolodziej (J. Kupiec);
- the memoirs of Mieczyslaw Stobierski (I. Szymanska);
- four papers by Henryk Swiebocki on Sinti and Romanies in KL Auschwitz escapes from the camp, reports submitted by the prisoners who escaped from KL Auschwitz and resistance inside the camp;
- on human hair as an exhibit of the State Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau (I. Bartosik - prepared for print).

The employees of the Unit for contacts with ex-prisoners have computerised over 3,000 camp files based on archive documents.
Work is in progress on creating a subject index of memoirs, reports and accounts by ex-prisoners, which now constitutes several dozen volumes of archive files. The interviews with ex-prisoners and resistance members offered an opportunity to collect over 50 original camp letters, postcards and secret messages, which have been included in the archive collections.

The Editorial and Publishing Department prepared, published and distributed various publications. 43 publications were prepared for print and published. These were historical papers, memoirs, new editions of guide books for visitors, albums of photographs, video tapes, posters and sequential issues of the PRO MEMORIA information bulletin. Most of the publications of the State Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau are sold at the Museum in several retail shops. The Museum's publications are also on sale outside Oowiecim, mainly in Krakow and Warsaw.
The Museum publishing house has received much help in preparing foreign-language publications from Austrians - members of the Gedenkdienst and Niemals Vergessen organisations, who volunteered to work in the Museum during their period of National Service.
Among the memoirs we can list: Temoins d'Auschwitz - an anthology of memoirs of KL Auschwitz ex-prisoners written in French, an autobiography of Tadeusz Sobolewicz entitled Wytrzymalem wiec jestem translated into English, the history of an ex-prisoner of Auschwitz recorded by German journalist Karin Graf in a book entitled Zitronen aus Kanada and the book entitled Gry Oowiecimskie (Playing at Auschwitz) by Szymon Laks, member of the "Camp Orchestra". Among the publications was also an album Krzyk (The cry) by Halina Olomucka, a KL Auschwitz ex-prisoner who now lives in Israel.

Zeszyty Oswiecimskie, vol. 22

The Zeszyty Oswiecimskie vol. 22 issued in late 1998 contain a particularly interesting paper by Piotr Setkiewicz on selected issues of the history if IG Werk Auschwitz. It reviews various research issues concerning the history of the IG Farben factory in Monowice, which so far have been little known or discussed. The work presents the reasons for deciding on the location of synthetic rubber plant near Oowiecim, the efforts of the factory's management aimed at increasing the efficiency of KL Auschwitz prisoner labour and the conditions of work and living of camp prisoners and large numbers of civilian and forced labourers, as well as the British and Italian prisoners of war who worked at the Monowice plant.
Regardless of the fact that the effectiveness of prisoner labour was lower than expected, the company management demanded increasing numbers of them to be sent to work, as they thought it was enough to tighten discipline and apply harsher punishments to increase the labour output to the expected levels. The factory management was also responsible for requesting the SS authorities to perform selections among the patients of the Monowice sick-bay, for tolerating the beating of prisoners by factory personnel and for lack of concern for prisoners' living conditions, food, clothes and the supply of tools which could have made their work easier.
Vol. 22 of the Zeszyty Oswiecimskie also contains:
- an extensive review by Irena Strzelecka on the men's camp in Birkenau (B II d), and;
- a study by Marian Grzegorz Gerlich on the perception of Auschwitz based on information shared by inhabitants the Silesian region. The available texts on the former death camp focus on the general description of KL Auschwitz-Birkenau, the intellectual, moral and (above all) religious dilemmas that were evoked by the camp's existence and the popularly accepted explanation of the camp's existence as a proof of the actual presence of Satan on earth and as a portent of the Apocalypse.

Work continues on the renovation of the "Sauna" building at the former Birkenau camp.
In October 1997 the Museum announced a bid for redesigning the former central "Sauna" building - the largest building at Birkenau where the initial procedure of admitting thousands of new prisoners brought to KL Auschwitz-Birkenau took place. In the second half of 1998 the work on preparing an exhibition continued. According to the preliminary schedule it is planned to be opened in 2000.

Permanent exhibition of the mass murder of Sinti and Romanies will be established.
The work on organising a permanent exhibition devoted to the mass murder of Romanies is also under way. It was initiated and in major part organised by the Centre for Culture and Documentation of the German Sinti and Romanies in Heidelberg. In the second half of 1998 the Museum took part in organising an international conference to present the advances in gathering documents by Romany representatives from various countries, the scientific and graphic concept of the exhibition and the schedule of further work. The exhibition is planned to open in 2000.

Exhibition entitled "The graphic art of KL Auschwitz prisoners".
The exhibition was open until late November 1998 in Block 12. It was seen by 30 thousand visitors.

New information boards and signs.
The graphic workshop prepared new information boards and signs to facilitate the movement of visitors around the former camp grounds. They include a map of road access to Birkenau, a map of Auschwitz I and new information signs at the Museum of Auschwitz.

In July, October and November 1998 the next sessions of the two-term postgraduate study for teachers of humanities took place. The study opened in February 1998 in accordance with an agreement between the Museum and the Teaching College in Krakow.
Cycles of meetings with teachers of humanities, educationalists and priests from primary and secondary schools were held. They are part of a larger educational programme prepared by the Education Department. Teachers engaged in the programme took part in specialised guided tours of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau camp complex. They had an opportunity to listen to lectures on the history of KL Auschwitz, to meet witnesses of the history, to see films about World War II and to acquaint themselves with a historical and methodological package compiled by the Museum staff and aimed at preparing primary and secondary school students for a visit to the Museum. The programme comprises such topics as research opportunities at the Auschwitz Memorial; KL Auschwitz in the arts; documentary films on Auschwitz; the Poles, Germans and ethnic minorities - stereotypes and prejudices.
Seminars and scholarships for school and university students from Poland and abroad were also organised.

26 employees of the Neuengamme Memorial visited the Museum in September 1998. During their stay the guests explored the grounds and buildings of the former KL Auschwitz in detail. They were acquainted with the collections and work of the Archive and Collections Department. The visit was an occasion to present the activities of the Museum in the fields of education, historical research and exhibitions. The guests also visited the old town of Oowiecim and took part in the discussion on the influence of Auschwitz on the education of Polish and German youth, which was organised at the International Youth Meeting House.

Microsoft Poland donated computer software for the Museum (Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0, Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Workstation, Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Front Page 98, Office 97 Pro and SQL Server). Some of these programs will allow the Museum to use the Intranet - an internal computer network which is currently being installed.

The Museum will have its own WWW home page. The Memorial Foundation for the Victims of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp has decided to finance the page. Two employees of the Museum Computer Unit were sent to the Northwestern University in USA to be trained in creating internet pages using panoramic digital photographs.

The Museum Management filed an appeal to the High Administrative Court against the decision of the chief administrator of the Bielsko voivodship, who supported the approval of the President of the City of Oowiecim to allow Maja Ltd. to build car parks and service facilities in the Museum zone. In August 1998 Maja Ltd. received the approval of President of Oowiecim to adopt buildings adjacent to the Museum to become car parks with service facilities for visitors. In October 1998 the Museum filed an appeal against this decision on the grounds that no development should begin in the zone until the general land use plan was prepared. In October 1998 the chief administrator of the Bielsko voivodship, Andrzej Sikora, rejected the appeal.

In November 1998, on the anniversary of the first transport of Italian Jews to concentration camps located on the Polish territory occupied by Germans, a cycle of events being part of the Week of Jewish Culture, took place in the Institute of Italian Culture and the Centre for Jewish Culture in Krakow. Elisa Springer, an ex-prisoner of the Auschwitz camp, presented her book entitled "The silence of the living". It was also an occasion to meet her son, Silvio Sammarco, a physician who works on tracing the effects of medical experiments done by the Nazis in concentration camps.

Joanna Wnuk-Nazar, Minister of Culture and Arts, nominated new members for the International Council of the Museum. The nominations were officially accepted and approved in December 1998 during a meeting of the Council. The new members are Kurt Hacker, chairman of the Auschwitz Committee, and Kazimierz Albin, president of the Society for Preserving Auschwitz.

The only surviving synagogue in Oswiecim opened again. Before the war it belonged to the Chevra Lomdei Mischnalot (Association for Studying Mischna). After 59 years a mezuzah was attached to its door frame again. The synagogue is now the property of the Jewish community of Bielsko-Biala. In a neighbouring building an American foundation (The Auschwitz Jewish Centre Foundation) and the Jewish community of Bielsko-Biala intend to establish a joint Jewish Education Centre, which will contain a small conference room, an exhibition of photographs depicting the life of the Jewish community in Oowiecim before the war and a small cafeteria. The synagogue will also be part of the complex. Before the synagogue was consecrated again, Daniel Eisenstadt, executive director of the Foundation (http://www.ajcf.org/), contacted Jerzy Wroblewski, the Director of the Museum, several times. They talked, among other things, about disseminating information about the centre among Museum visitors.

Teresa Swiebocka, Senior Conservator and Head of the Editorial and Information Department, became a member of the Polish delegation to the Washington Conference. The conference, attended by 57 delegations from 44 countries, was devoted to the issue of compensation for Jewish property stolen by the Nazis from 1933 to 1945. Issues of commemorating the victims of Nazism were also discussed. A variety of publications produced by the Museum was presented to the participants in the conference, including memoirs of surviving prisoners, research papers, albums and videotapes.

An ecumenical group of over 100 people from the Nipponzan Mychoji visited the Museum in early November. It was the fourth pilgrimage to Auschwitz organised by this Buddhist religious organisation. The first took place in autumn 1995. It was called "the pilgrimage of peace and life" and was to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. Its motto were the words of Nichidatsu Fuji, the founder of the Nipponzan Mychoji: "Civilisation is not only electricity, aeroplanes or nuclear bombs; civilisation is not killing people, the destruction of their property and conducting wars; civilisation is fostering mutual love and respect". This was the foundation for future pilgrimages.

A plenary session of the International Council of the Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau, chaired by Professor Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, took place on December 10 and 11, 1998. Ms Joanna Wnuk-Nazar, Minister of Culture and Arts, informed the Council about the results of the conference on returning the stolen property of victims, as well as on the issues of education and the commemoration of the victims of the Holocaust.
Ms Agnieszka Magdziak-Miszewska, advisor to the Prime Minister, informed the Council on the work on a proposed law on national memorial places, which the government intends to submit to the Polish Parliament.
The council expressed its appreciation of the major progress in conservation work at the camp in 1998. It agreed that it was necessary to accelerate research and work on the ruins of the crematoria and to continue the work at the "Sauna" and the former camp fences.
Mr. Kalman Sultanik, Deputy Chairman of the Council and the Chairman of the Financial Commission presented information on the funds already raised or promised by various governments and organisations aimed at the preservation and conservation of the Memorial Site.
Ms Krystyna Oleksy, Deputy Director of the Museum, spoke about the current progress of work on the "Sauna" building which will be opened for visitors and will also house a permanent exhibition.
The Council also discussed the issue of the so-called "national" exhibitions which have existed for decades. Both political changes in Europe and changes in social awareness and perception call for the removal of the obsolete elements which are so obvious in these exhibitions. The Scientific Commission of the Council will be consulted about proposed changes.
The Council re-confirmed its earlier resolutions concerning the preservation of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau camp grounds in an unchanged form. Thus it endorsed its earlier decision on the need to provide a separate building for individual commemoration of victims. The members of the Council, most of whom are ex-prisoners of Auschwitz-Birkenau, cannot remain silent in view of the upsetting events which have taken place at the so-called Gravel Pit. The Council condemns the acts of irresponsible persons who use religious symbols to incite tensions and conflicts. The Council accepts with gratitude the neutral attitude of the Polish government and it proposes to restore the place to its previous condition.