Last update - 00:00 07/01/2008
2007 sees record number of visitors at Auschwitz extermination camp
By The Associated Press
The museum at the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau tallied a record number of visitors in 2007, officials said Monday.
More than 1.2 million people visited the site of the notorious German camp in southern Poland - the largest number of visitors since the museum was founded in 1947, museum spokesman Jaroslaw Mensfelt said.
In comparison, around 500,000 people visited the former camp in 2001, Mensfelt said.
The biggest group of visitors came from Poland, Mensfelt said, mainly because schools often require a visit to the camp for its students. A large number of Britons, Americans and Germans also visited the camp in 2007.
Mensfelt attributed the jump in visitor numbers to Poland's membership in the European Union, which the country joined in 2004, and the rise of budget airlines in the region.
Some 1.5 million people - mostly Jews, but also gays, Gypsies, Poles and Soviet prisoners of war - were killed at the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II.
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