Conservation work completed on Auschwitz barracks

WARSAW, Poland – The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum says conservation work has been completed on half of a wooden barracks that housed prisoners at the former Nazi German death camp during World War II.

The restored half had been on loan to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., for more than 20 years before it was returned in 2013 to its original site in southern Poland, an area under German occupation during the war.

The U.S. museum had resisted demands by Poland to return the object, arguing that it was too fragile to be returned.

But Poland insisted that its own law required its return.

A spokesman for the Auschwitz museum, Pawel Sawicki, said Tuesday that conservation work was completed in mid-July and will open to study groups in August, following a gathering this week of Catholic youth in the area with Pope Francis.

The part that remained on the site had been previously restored.