Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, dear Friends,

on behalf of all the staff of the International Youth Meeting Centre in Oświęcim, I would like to wish you all the best for 2021.

This year, in all households, the wishes will probably be different than in previous years. I would like to reinforce the wishes conveyed by expressing my gratitude to all of you, to all of you who have supported our institution, our house, over the past 9 months. I would like to especially thank our partners, guests and partner institutions. We had a sense of solidarity that translated into a concrete expression of support for the activities of the Youth Meeting Centre. It is said that friends meet in poverty, we too, like many institutions and many people, found ourselves in a complicated situation. All the more I am happy to express my gratitude and hope that we will meet many more times in the coming year at our seminars, educational or cultural events and human rights education events.

I address special words of Christmas wishes to former prisoners, witnesses of history - people who are most important to us to this day, who are our role models, who give us directions on what to do, how to interpret reality in order to preserve this value system that guides us.

Finally, I wish each of you that under the Christmas tree, perhaps instead of a magnificent gift, you find much love, tenderness from your loved ones, or perhaps just kindness. These are all elements that we need to get through this difficult time of the pandemic, and I am sure that we will thus enter the new year strengthened to be able to fulfil the mission of the house and make the International Youth Meeting Centre a place of encounter and exchange again. That is what I wish you and myself for the year 2021.

Leszek Szuster, the IYMC Director