Some 225,000 pilgrims want to visit Auschwitz Museum during WYD
Some 225,000 pilgrims coming to Poland in July to attend World Youth Day want to visit the Auschwitz Museum, according to WYD 2016 organisers.
Auschwitz, a former World War II German Nazi death camp in southern Poland, lies about 50 kilometres from Krakow.
On July 20-28 and August 1-3, 2016 the Auschwitz Museum will be open exclusively to World Youth Day participants, who have to register in advance to visit the site of the former Nazi death camp. http://mlodzi.duszpasterstwa.bielsko.pl/auschwitz/
All 133,000 entries prepared for the pilgrims were booked very quickly so the organisers raised their number to some 300,000. Still available are 75,500 entries.
World Youth Day, to be held July 25-31, was initiated by John Paul II in 1985. It is celebrated internationally every two to three years.
The Auschwitz concentration camp was opened in 1940, its second section Birkenau two years later. The main site of the Jewish Holocaust, Auschwitz consisted of a main camp and 40 sub-units, where the Nazis killed over 1.1 million people, mainly Jews, Poles, Roma and Soviet POWs.
The camp was liberated by the Soviets on January 27, 1945.
In 1947 the camp site was declared a national memorial site. In 2014 it was visited by a record 1.53 million people. (PAP)
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