World Heritage Committee renames Auschwitz

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
UNESCO has officially renamed the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland to make clear it was established and run by occupying German Nazi forces, a World Heritage Committee spokesman said Thursday. The camp will now be known as "Auschwitz-Birkenau. German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945)," said Roni Amelan, a spokesman for UNESCO's World Heritage Committee. The committee agreed to change the name from "Auschwitz Concentration Camp" at a meeting in New Zealand following a request from Poland, and the change is effective immediately, Amelan said. Auschwitz, where the Nazis killed more than 1 million people, has become a symbol of the Holocaust. Birkenau was the neighboring camp and the site of the main gas chambers and crematoriums.