BERLIN // Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp where more than one million Jews were murdered, is crumbling fast and needs a massive injection of funds to preserve it for future generations, the authority than runs the memorial site says. The Auschwitz museum has launched an international appeal to help set up a ?120 million (Dh586m) fund that would ensure the long-term survival of the site, which is located in southern Poland near the city of Krakow. Last year it attracted more than one million visitors.
Many of the 155 buildings and 300 ruins, which include the remains of four gas chambers, are decaying as a result of the damp ground and will be lost irretrievably if nothing is done, officials said. "We think it is the common responsibility of Europe to save this site for future generations," said Jacek Kastelianec, head of fund-raising at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum. Auschwitz is the most visited of the Nazi camps, and the only one that had the dual functions of concentration camp and extermination camp. It was a death factory purpose-built to kill Jews primarily.
In Birkenau, part of the Auschwitz camp complex, half of the brick prisoners' barracks are already closed to the public because they are dangerous to enter. "The buildings weren't built to last forever, most of them were built by prisoners," Mr Kastelianec said. "Ten years ago almost every building in Birkenau was open to the public. In the next 10 years if we do nothing all the buildings will have to be closed and 10 years after that they will be gone. That is the scenario we don't even want to think about."
The entire site needs to be overhauled in a step-by-step process that will last 20 years and will have to be constantly repeated, Mr Kastelianec said. The museum estimates that the most urgent tasks will require ?60m. It says it needs long-term annual funding of ?4m to ?5m to pay for the repairs and wants the planned ?120m endowment fund to generate that sum each year. It has asked European countries as well as the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan and South Korea to pay into the fund.
The German government was first to respond with a concrete, albeit small, pledge of ?1m in February, and it said it would provide further funds next year. "We have had unofficial, positive responses from many countries but for the moment we haven't received any other specific pledges; we're still waiting," Mr Kastelianec said. "Germany is one of the important countries to contribute because of the very well-known reason but it is not a question of culpability anymore, and I don't think it should be the only one country to pay."
Historians estimate that between one million and 1.5 million people were murdered in Auschwitz and that up to 1.35 million of them were Jews. Thousands of Poles, Sinti and Roma and Soviet prisoners of war were also killed there. Families brought here by train from Germany and Nazi-occupied territories were separated from one another on the unloading ramps and all those deemed unfit for labour - including most of the children, the elderly and infirm - were told to strip, herded into gas chambers and murdered with Zyklon B gas.
An estimated 20 per cent of arrivals at Auschwitz were chosen for labour - the rest were killed. An estimated six million Jews died in the Holocaust. The liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet forces on Jan 27 1945 is marked in Germany as a national day of remembrance for the victims of the Nazis. Until 1990 the Polish government paid for the upkeep of the memorial site, which was included in Unesco's list of world heritage sites in 1947.
In the 1990s, after the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, Germany contributed about ?20m towards maintaining Auschwitz. Other European governments and private donors have also made contributions. "We continue to regard it as a core task of Germany to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive," said a spokeswoman for the German foreign ministry. "We will continue to stand by Germany's historical responsibility."
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German foreign minister, who is campaigning to become chancellor in a general election in September, said he would lobby for additional funding to be set aside for Auschwitz in next year's budget and that he would ask German companies and foundations to contribute. Mr Kastelianec said part of the reason for making the appeal now was because former Auschwitz survivors are dying out and the museum will not be able to rely on them to help campaign for support much longer.
He said the museum was updating and modernising its exhibition to make it more easily accessible for the large numbers of visitors. "But it will be no revolutionary change, there won't be many multimedia features because this is a special place which speaks for itself," he said. Auschwitz has more than 100,000 items on display including stacks of suitcases, large quantities of shoes, spectacles and hair taken from the victims, camp uniforms and archival documents.
Since 2001, the number of visitors has more than doubled to 1.13 million last year, with about 70 per cent being of school or university age. Germans made up the fourth-largest group of visitors. Most of the visitors came from Poland, followed by British and Americans. "Only a shared effort will make it possible to preserve the authenticity of this place and its message," said the director of the museum, Piotr Cywinski, in the museum's annual report. "The victims demand that we remember. We all need to remember - today and tomorrow."
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