  Strangeness production in heavy ion collisions is discussed in a broad energy
range from SIS to RHIC. %We emphasize that in the In the whole energy range
particle yields are showing high level of chemical equilibration which can be
described by the unified freezeout conditions of fixed energy/particle $\simeq
1$GeV. The statistical model within the canonical formulation of strangeness
conservation provides a framework to describe the observed enhancement of
(multi)strange particles from p+A to A+A collisions measured at the SPS energy
and predicts that this enhancement should be larger for decreasing collision
energy. However, only at the SPS and RHIC chemical freezeout temperature is
consistent within error with the critical value required for deconfinement and
simultaneously strangeness is uncorrelated and distributed in the whole volume
of the fireball.
