WARSAW - Polish and US officials are engaged in intense talks to determine the fate of a sensitive object: barracks that once housed doomed prisoners at the Nazis’ Auschwitz death camp and are now on display at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Poland is demanding the return of the artifact, which has been on loan to the Washington museum for more than 20 years and is an important element in its permanent exhibition. But the US museum says the barracks should not be moved, partly because it is too fragile.
The issue has arisen because of a Polish law aimed at safeguarding a cultural heritage ravaged by past wars, particularly World War II. Under the law, passed in 2003, any historic object on loan abroad must return to Poland every five years for inspection. While Poland appears open to renewing the loan, it says the barracks must return - at least temporarily.
Because of the rule, the US museum in recent years has already returned thousands of objects dating to the Holocaust, often in exchange for new, temporary loans of similar items.
The barracks on view in Washington is just half of a wooden building where prisoners slept in cramped, filthy, and often freezing conditions as they awaited extermination. The remaining half still stands at Birkenau, a part of the vast Auschwitz-Birkenau complex.