Netanyahu to inaugurate Auschwitz exhibition on June 13

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit Poland on June 13 for the opening of a new exhibition at the museum of the former Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, organisers said Monday. In the works for four years, the exhibition will present "the murder at Auschwitz in the larger context of the Nazis' systematic attempt to exterminate the Jewish people," said Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust institute, the curators. The "Shoah" display will be located in Block 27, the oldest part of the camp set up by Nazi Germany in the southern town of Oswiecim in occupied Poland. The unveiling was originally due on May 9 but had to be pushed back because of Netanyahu's schedule. Around 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were killed between 1940 and 1945 at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most notorious of the death camps run by Nazi Germany. Among the camp's other victims were tens of thousands of non-Jewish Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, gypsies and anti-Nazi resistance fighters from across Europe. Several countries have their own exhibitions at the Auschwitz museum, including Russia, France and Poland.