Five-hour disappearance of Auschwitz museum and memorial's new Facebook page was 'due to a technical problem'

The Facebook page of the Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, launched on Tuesday, can now be reached again. The page has gained a lot of media attention over the past few days; but from 3.30pm yetserday, those who tried to visit it were redirected to the Facebook start page. It took hours until the page came back up.

"The site was offline due to a technical problem.", explains museum official Pawel Sawicki this morning. "We wanted to add a new box and were not able to. Therefore the side was broken for about five hours. But with the help of Facebook technicians the problem was fixed around 9pm." Since the page came back it has already gained another 1,000 "fans". The museum has also added photos and an interview with Marian Kołodziej, a Polish scenographer and former prisoner of Auschwitz; it is aiming to constantly develop the page.

Although the Auschwitz memorial is not the first Holocaust-related organisation to appear on Facebook, most of the Facebook groups dedicated to Auschwitz are started by individuals. One exception is the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which opened a fan page on Facebook with about 2,250 followers. The centre, which is dedicated to teaching lessons of the Holocaust for future generations, also started to use Twitter @simonwiesenthal. The use of the social networks seems logical, since the idea of organisations dedicated to memorialisting the Holocaust is to reach out to as many people as possible. Indeed the arrival of Holocaust organisations on social networks comes rather late compared with that of groups that promote race hate.

In May a report found that militants and hate groups were increasingly using social networking sites as propaganda tools to recruit new members. The social network came under heavy fire for hosting pages promoting hatred against Jews. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre reported back then a 25% rise in "problematic" social networking groups within a year. Facebook and experts from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre met to focus on the problem. The centre launched its own Facebook page a few months later.

By Raffi Berg BBC News

Auschwitz's Facebook page follows the launch of its channel on YouTube

The Polish authorities in charge of Auschwitz have launched an official site for the former Nazi death camp on the social networking website Facebook.

A spokesman said the move was aimed at reaching the younger generation and educating them about the Holocaust.

It follows the launch by Auschwitz - now a state museum - of a YouTube channel earlier this year.

More than a million people - 90% of them Jews - were murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz during World War II.

"We're always trying for new ways of reaching people, and in today's world one of the most popular tools is the internet, and on the internet millions of people use Facebook," said Auschwitz Museum official Pawel Sawicki.

More than a million people have visited Auschwitz so far this year, the majority of them young people.

"If our mission is to educate the younger generation to be responsible in the contemporary world, what better tool can we use to reach them than the tools they use themselves?" said Mr Sawicki.

The Facebook page contains news and information about the museum, links to its YouTube channel and official website, and a discussion board. The first topic is about whether Auschwitz should have a presence on Facebook.

"The Facebook page will provide a place for discussion which is not available on the official website," said Mr Sawicki.

"We want it to be a place of discourse but of course we won't let anyone do anything that may abuse the memory of the victims and this place.

"So far, it's just an experiment. We'll see how people react," he said.

If ever an excuse were needed...

Kseniya Simonova, the winner of TV show contest 'Ukraine's Got Talent', creates a drawing in sand in Yevpatoria, Sept 24, 2009. Photograph: Stringer/Russia/Reuters

The appearance of a shy 24-year-old on a Ukrainian TV talent show this year has caused a nation to revisit its painful wartime past and is well on the way to becoming an international sensation.

About 13 million people watched Kseniya Simonova win Ukraine's Got Talent live with an extraordinary demonstration of "sand art". Most of them, according to reports, were weeping. The judges and studio audience sobbed throughout. Ukraine, where a fraught presidential election campaign is under way ahead of a vote in January 2010, is enduring a deepening financial crisis and the raw, sentimental depiction of Ukraine's suffering, even drawn in sand, was too much.

Ever since May, when Simonova first stepped on stage with a light-box full of sand and drew pictures in it, deftly creating tableaux of the country's history, her performances have collected new viewers. Her winning appearance has now notched up more than four million hits on YouTube. The number of hits is extraordinary for a foreign web clip, especially given that few people watching it could understand its message.

Ukraine lost one in four of its population during the Second World War, the largest losses of any country and about 20% of the total deaths.

Simonova's sand story portrays the human loss after the German invasion in 1941. The opening scene shows a couple sitting on a bench under a starry sky. Warplanes appear and the happy scene is obliterated to be replaced by crying faces. Then a baby arrives and the woman smiles again, but war and chaos return and a young woman becomes an old widow, before the image turns into an obelisk – the Ukrainian monument to its Unknown Soldier.

Simonova has returned to ordinary life in the Crimean seaside town of Evpatoria, where she has used her £80,000 prize to buy a modest house and set up a children's charity.

Simonova has told interviewers she is happy to stay in Evpatoria and will not be travelling abroad to cash in on her growing global fan base. Her success has taken the young woman by surprise. "I only entered because there was a child I know who needed an operation and I wanted to help," she said. "I did not mean to make the whole country cry."

So random, i just finished watching Miracle at St Anna last night and woke up to NPR about this story. If you haven't seen Miracle at St Anna, check it out, worth watching and very entertaining, it's definitely erratic but moves your emotions all over the place. The story is about an ex Buffalo Soldier who shoots this guy he runs into while working at the post office and the mystery behind why he shoots this guy with a Luger only months from his retirement. The story focuses on WW2 and some of the vile things the Nazi's did in Tuscany Italy.