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The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum is a memorial and museum in Oświęcim, Poland, which includes the German concentration camps Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau. It is devoted to the memory of the murders in both camps during World War II. The museum performs several tasks, among them research into the Holocaust.


On July 2, 1947, the museum was founded by resolution of the Polish parliament. The area covers 191 hectares, twenty of them in camp Auschwitz I and 171 in camp Auschwitz II. Since 1979 the former concentration camp has belonged to the World Cultural Heritage and more than 25 million people have visited the museum. From 1955 to 1990 the museum was directed by one of its founders and former inmates, Kazimierz Smoleń.


After the Soviet Union handed over the camp to Poland in 1947, the parliament declared the area to be a museum on July 2, 1947. Simultaneously the first exhibition in the barracks was opened.