The Establishment of the Museum. Its History and Present State.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum was created by an act of the Polish parliament on July 2, 1947, and includes the grounds of two extant parts of the Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camps.

The Museum grounds cover 191 hectares, of which 20 are at Auschwitz I and 171 at Auschwitz II-Birkenau. A buffer zone for the Museum grounds in Birkenau was established in 1962, and a similar zone at Auschwitz I in 1977. Both zones were revised in 1999 under the terms of a new law on the protection of the sites of Nazi death camps. The main idea behind the establishment of the buffer zone was the protection of the authentic context of the Memorial and the provision of essential security.

On the museum grounds stand several hundred camp buildings and ruins, including the ruins of the gas chambers and crematoria, over a dozen kilometers of camp fence, camp roads, and the railroad spur ("ramp") at Birkenau.

In 1979, the site of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was entered on the UNESCO international list of world heritage sites.

As early as 1947, the first exhibition, expanded in 1950, was opened in several camp blocks at the Auschwitz I concentration camp site. It presented the history of extermination and the conditions in which the prisoners lived. A new exhibition was opened in 1955. With some changes, it is still in use today.
After 1960, some of the camp blocks contained the so-called "national exhibitions," created at the initiative of former prisoners from various countries who are associated in the International Auschwitz Committee. They primarily portray the fate of the citizens of those countries who were deported by the Nazis in transports to Auschwitz concentration camp.

In view of the exceptional nature of the site of the Birkenau camp, which is above all a cemetery, no exhibitions have been situated there since the establishment of the Museum. An effort has been made to preserve the site in a state close to the original. The only large new element in this part of the site is the International Monument to the Victims of the Camp, unveiled at a 1967 ceremony.

In its work over the last few years, the Museum has concentrated on explicating and commemorating the site and the buildings, and on illustrating important places and the most crucial events in the history of Auschwitz concentration camp.
Birkenau is regarded as the most important part of the camp complex, and all conceptual and planning work has begun with that part of the Museum. The Museum placed new commemorative and informational tablets there in the mid-1990s.

Work is also underway on introducing new markers on the site of Auschwitz I concentration camp, in its vicinity, and at the site of the Buna sub-camp (Monowitz, which at its peak held 10,000 prisoners working for the German IG Farbenindustrie cartel). Further plans for the marking of areas at present outside the boundaries of the museum and the buffer zone are also being prepared. These areas include the so-called Judenrampe (the site from 1942 to 1944 of selections of Jews arriving at the camp, situated near the main railroad line some 1.5 kilometers from Auschwitz and Birkenau) and the road from the Judenrampe to Birkenau, along which thousands of deportees were led to the camp between 1942 and May 1944 (when a railroad spur leading directly to Birkenau concentration camp came into use).