Local authority closes controversial disco club in former Auschwitz factory

According to a decision by Malopolska voivode Ryszard Maslowski, the controversial disco club in Oswiecim (Auschwitz) must close. Maslowski thus annulled a previous decision by Oswiecim's governor, Adam Bliski, under which the disco club was to be created in a former leather tannery two kilometers from the former concentration camp. When Bliski granted permission for the club to open last summer, the Foundation for the International Youth Meeting Center (MDSM), which houses guests in a building near the disco, appealed to Maslowski, arguing that a dance club should not be opened in a building where concentration camp prisoners used to work during World War II. A representative of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said the disco"encouraged young people to dance in the immediate vicinity of the largest Jewish graveyard in history." Government spokesman Krzysztof Luft said the decision"will remove a serious source of tensions." (Reuters; Zycie, p. 4) A.Z.