Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum

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The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (Polish: Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau) is a museum on the site of the Nazi German Auschwitz concentration camp in Oświęcim, Poland. The site includes the main concentration camp at Auschwitz I and the remains of the concentration and extermination camp at Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Both were developed and run by Nazi Germany during its occupation of Poland in 1939–1945. The Polish government has preserved the site as a research centre and in memory of the 1.1 million people who died there, including 960,000 Jews, during World War II and the Holocaust. It became a World Heritage Site in 1979. Piotr Cywiński has served as the museum's director since 2006.

The museum was created in April 1946 by Tadeusz Wąsowicz and other former Auschwitz prisoners, acting under the direction of Poland's Ministry of Culture and Art. It was formally founded on July 2, 1947, by an act of the Polish parliament. The site consists of 20 hectares (49 acres) in Auschwitz I and 171 hectares (420 acres) in Auschwitz II, which lies about three kilometres from the main camp. Over 25 million people have visited the museum. From 1955 to 1990, the museum was directed...