The Auschwitz Museum overseeing the site of the infamous World War Two Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz in south Poland now offers online lessons about the camp in Arabic, Persian, Spanish and Portuguese, the museum informed PAP Monday.
To date the lessons were available only in Polish and English.
Auschwitz Museum deputy director Andrzej Kacorzyk said one of the criteria in selecting the new language versions was the frequency with which the campsite is visited by the members of the chosen language groups.
"Spaniards belong to the most frequent visitors, last year more than 52 thousand visited the memorial site", Kacorzyk said. He added that the Spanish language version was mainly addressed to Latin Americans, who may find it difficult to travel to the site in Poland.
Commenting the Arabic and Persian versions, Kacorzyk said the reason for their preparation hung together with the greatly distorted picture of the Holocaust present in those countries.
"Young people without sufficient English skills should be enabled access to information about Auschwitz in their native languages, and the internet is an excellent medium for this", Kacorzyk explained.
The lessons offer basic facts and dates from the camp's history as well as audio- and videotaped accounts by former inmates.
The Auschwitz camp opened in 1940 as an incarceration site for Poles. In the following years it became the main site of the Jewish Holocaust. At least 1.1 million people perished in the camp, mainly Jews, Poles, Roma and Soviet POWs. (PAP)
Ewa Malcher
