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MA Tommi Kotonen

University of Jyväskylä, Finland

Politics of preservation: Rescuing the authenticity of Auschwitz

Since its founding the Museum of Auschwitz has been a part of memory politics between several groups. Even the most

innocent looking objectives, like conserving the remains, are not free of contradictions. What one wants to remember, or

what is seen as worth forgetting, is constantly redefined in the ongoing process and the form of the museum is conditioned by

financial resources and possibilities but also by political conjectures. In the end one of the most crucial questions is to whom

does Auschwitz belong for: its victims, to the governments or for the future generations.

”Whatever you write or say... will only be words, and words are out of proportion to everything Auschwitz"

– Wojciech Kawecki, former Auschwitz prisoner1.

Former concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau (1940-1945) is today a monument and graveyard, but

also a museum visited by more than a million persons per annum. Occasionally it has also been a stage

for political demonstrations, a fact that has had its consequences for the development of the museum.

Former camp and today's museum consists of two parts: the main camp Auschwitz and extermination

camp Birkenau. As an open-air museum Birkenau has been open for the elements for over six decades

and has severely decayed. Need for restoration is urgent.

One of the most well-known experts on Holocaust and Auschwitz, Canadian culture historian Robert

Jan van Pelt suggested recently that grass should be left to grow over the camp of Birkenau, nature

should be allowed to take its own. He emphasized that great deal of what we know about history is

known via written sources, and Auschwitz does not need to be an exception to this. According to Van

Pelt ruins and objects collected at the museum cannot possibly represent what happened there sixty

years earlier, and the best way to approach the actual history of the camp is using written sources,

memoirs and recollections of the former inmates.2 In an interview in 2002 he made the case as follows:

1 Quoted in Waclaw Dlugoborski, Franciszek Piper, Auschwitz 1940-1945. Central Issues in the

History of the Camp.Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Oswiecim 2000, Vol. 5, 63. 2 Brett Popplewell, “A case for letting nature take back Auschwitz”, The Star, December 27, 2009.

Online (consulted 23.7.2011): http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/742965--a-case-forlettingnature-take-back-auschwitz

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"Ultimately, if you want to in some way enter that world, do it through a book. [--] Also, accept that in

some way this event and this place somewhat transcends our possibilities to imagine what happened

there. And say, 'OK, let's seal it off, as the Jewish tradition calls it, [as] a cursed place,' and say, 'We can

approach it but we cannot enter it anymore.'"3

His argument refers especially to that fact that we are approaching the age when there are no longer

survivors alive to tell their own personal experiences. Camp will become, instead of being still a part of

personal memories of its inmates, a part of ordinary history best experienced through books and

memoirs. Experience of Auschwitz is basically incommunicable. We can no more enter the land of

dead, the land of victims, because we do not have the survivor as our proxy, so place itself can be

sealed. Unnatural and indescribable becomes again part of the nature.4

Current director of Auschwitz Museum, Piotr Cywinski, who is the first director not being a former

inmate, also sees Auschwitz as becoming a part of ordinary history, "Auschwitz is about to slip into

history". But he draws quite different conclusions from the situation. He argues that after those who

have personal experiences of the camp have passed away, there is need to continue efforts to remain

and restore the museum. Cywinski sees that tangible remains save and conserve the memory of the

victims, "younger generations raised on TV and movie special effects need to see and touch the real

thing".5 Van Pelt and Cywinski have differing opinions on the issue of restoration and preservation of

Auschwitz. But they are by no means the most radical suggestions presented for the future of the

museum, not even close.

Auschwitz, Birkenau - sites of history and memory

The camp of Birkenau was not originally planned as longstanding, but buildings were assembled from

recycled material and were even built without proper foundations. Already few years after the war those

3 Richard Gizbert, "First Death, Now Decay: As Concentration Camps Crumble, Debate Rises Over

Their Preservation," ABC News, November 24, 2002. Online (consulted 3.8.2011): http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/Pelt/Decaying_Auschwitz.html 4 See also Robert Jan van Pelt, “Of Shells and Shadows: A Memoir on Auschwitz”, Transactions of the Royal

Historical Society (Sixth Series) 2003, Vol. 13, pp. 377-392, 382. The impossibility to bear witness and incommunicability of their experience is among the most common topoi in the camp literature. For example Primo Levi tells of new language developed inside the camp, language that would have been impossible to understand anyone who has not been there. See Primo Levi: If this is a Man. Orion Press 1959, 144. 5 In Andrew Curry, “Can Auschwitz Be Saved?”, Smithsonian Magazine February 2010, Online (consulted 23.7.2011):

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Can- Auschwitz-Be-Saved.html

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barracks, which were saved from Germans and post-war annihilation, started to rot. Swampy terrain did

not much help in efforts saving them for posterity.

The Central State Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau was established in 1947, but there had been a small

memorial exhibition already from summer 1945 on, built by the former inmates. At the opening of new

museum spoke Poland's Prime Minister Jozef Cyrankiewicz, who also was an ex-inmate of Auschwitz.

He declared that museum will be "an eternal warning and document of unbound German bestiality".6

Besides emphasizing the eternal importance of the museum, statement is also interesting in that sense

that it sort of sets Germans as the target of the museum. Germans are those who need warning, who

need to feel guilty. Camp itself is German. The ruins and still-existing buildings were designed by the

Germans, not their victims, and thus show the design of the perpetrators. What is left of the victims,

especially the Jews, is just some scattered items that they brought with them and that was robbed from

them.

The original concept of the museum was guided by the political circumstances: in post-war Poland the

relations between Poles and Jews were strained and antisemitic attacks were not uncommon. Partly

because of the lack of resources, partly because of politics, the best preserved part of the main camp

was selected to be the center of the museum. That choice stressed the experiences of Polish political

prisoners and their martyrdom, as Poles were mostly held at the main camp. Birkenau, which was the

center for the annihilation of the Jews, was left aside and without much maintenance. In the concept of

museum Jews were absent, deceased, and Polish survivors ruled the remembrance. The small Jewish

exhibition was even closed for over ten years after six days war because of anti-Israeli politics of

communist East-Bloc.7

First years of museum were a battle against robbery and vandalism, many of the camps surviving

buildings were dismantled or removed, bricks from the ruins of crematories were taken for building

houses, and even the ashes of the victims were shifted in hope of finding gold, jewels or other

valuables. Today visitors’ see at Birkenau a sea of chimneys, only thing left of hundreds of barracks that

were removed after the war to house polish workers and families.

6 Quoted in Jonathan Huener, Auschwitz, Poland and the Politics of Commemoration, 1945-1979. Athens

(Oh.): Ohio University Press, 2003, 33. 7 There has of course been other groups as well, depending of the political conjectures, that has not been

acknowledged as victims. Even today the official museum webpage tells first prisoners were Polish political prisoners, even though first thirty prisoners that arrived at Auschwitz were German criminals. As the Germans worked as Kapos, leaders of the other prisoners, they usually have not been granted the status of victim.

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At start museum was not accepted by everyone. Some saw it more appropriate to build a cemetery

instead of a museum. One of the first propositions for a new concept of museum was indeed a grand

cemetery, called Campo Sancto and consisting of monuments built by every national and other group

that had its members among the victims. In another proposition the whole area of the camps was

planned to be reforested.8

During the Cold War most of the activities were concentrated on the main camp of Auschwitz. The

extermination camp Birkenau was not included in the official tour and visitor ended there more or less

by accident. But being abandoned, silent and untouchable, and without official explanatory signs all

around, Birkenau sometimes made much more lasting impression on visitor than well organized

museums of the main camp. Some even told they felt horror while visiting Birkenau. One early visitor,

a journalist from Switzerland, wrote that "in Birkenau, unlike in the Auschwitz camp, reigns an

unearthly calm" and "between the ruins - a horrifying and at the same time comforting symbolism -

grows grass in abundance".9 Nature that spread over the machinery of mass murder like "a soft carpet",

somehow could have been seen as a healing element, that also puts the things in their proper

perspective. Birkenau was a place of memory, place of experience, while Auschwitz was a place of

history and learning.

8 Bohdan Rymaszewski, Generations Should Remember, Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Oswiecim

2003, 58-59, 70. 9 Quotations from Huener, 138. Huener provides also an comprehensive account of the development of the Auschwitz

museum during the Cold War.

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In the monument competition under chairing by Henry Moore in the late 1950's one of the presented

plans suggested that the whole area of Birkenau should be closed from visitors, and there should be

built only a narrow path over the camp area stretching from the gate to the crematories. According the

plan the ruins would be overgrown by the grass and there would be no signs or explanations to clarify

the history of the area. It would have made the camp to appear as strange, distant, and unreachable but

still visible landscape of past horrors. The difference between Birkenau and main camp would have

been even more striking.10

Proposition was unanimously accepted by the jury lead by Moore, but was not accepted by the

representatives of the former inmates who said "You cannot lock us out of our own experience. We

suffered here; we need to be able to return to the site where we suffered."11 Planning and building the

new monument lasted for years, and winning plan was rewritten several times. The final winning plan

was a compilation of three different plans. The monument to be erected was redesigned many times, to

fit better to prevailing political ideology: for example the statues representing children were replaced by

the symbols referring to political inmates just days before unveiling. That was, according to James

Young, because the statue of children was interpreted as a reference to Jews.12

10

Of the competition see Deborah Dwork, Robert Jan van Pelt, Auschwitz, 1270 to the present. New York: W.W. Norton , 2008, 376-378; and also James E. Young, Texture of Memory. Holocaust Memorials and Meaning, New Haven: Yale University Press, 136-138. 11

Quoted in Brett Popplewell, “A case for letting nature take back Auschwitz”, The Star, December 27, 2009. Online (consulted 23.3.2011): http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/742965--a-case-forlettingnature-take-back-auschwitz 12

Young, 138-141.

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Auschwitz-Birkenau after Cold War

Discussion about proper ways of remembrance and preservation has been going on just about as long

as the museum has existed, and especially lively it has been during last 20 years. Camp has also been

since 1979 a part of the Unesco World Heritage list, and that status has obligated the museum to put

even more attention to preservation plans. Auschwitz is also the only concentration camp or even place

of mass murder at that list, and it has been noted by the Unesco that no other such places will be

accepted to the list. Unesco thus in a way canonized the uniqueness of the Holocaust, and Auschwitz as

its central symbol.

After the collapse of the communist system Auschwitz museum was also in a new situation: earlier

ways of representing the camp as extreme form of capitalism and imperialism was no more favored

political line. Camp was also badly decayed during the years and state had no funds to preserve or even

maintain it.

In 1989 an international committee was gathered to find solutions for preservation of the camp and for

development of the museum. In that occasion Jean-Claude Pressac, former Holocaust denier and one

of the leading scholars on the technical aspects of extermination processes at Auschwitz, made a

suggestion that one of the crematories and gas chamber adjacent to it should be rebuilt on the basis of

survived blue prints so that claims made by the so called holocaust deniers would have been given a

final blow. Pressac wrote that ”I want people to experience exactly what it meant to enter a gas

chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau. I want them to walk down the stairs into the chamber, to stand before

the ovens and see that this was insane and criminal. I want it to be a slap in the face. You can’t create

memory, but you can create an experience that is as powerful as memory."13

Proposal that in the end became the official stance of the committee was anyway such that camp

should be preserved as ruins, to remind us that Auschwitz-Birkenau is also a huge cemetery and final

resting place of over million people. It was clear that there was a will to stress the importance of

Auschwitz for the Jews and committee wanted more activities to be moved to Birkenau. Also later

committee assembled in 1996 had same kind of wishes but the center of the camp and the core of tours

stayed at the main camp.

13

Quoted in Kalman Sultanik “Auschwitz-Birkenau: a sacred zone of inviolability” Midstream Journal, November 1, 2003, Vol. 49 Number 7, 6.

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Even though Poles make strong protests when Auschwitz is labeled as Polish camp in the international

media instead of being called German or Nazi camp that just happened to be in Poland, they still want

to stress the importance of the camp especially for the Poland and Poles. Also in the publications of the

museum Polish victims play a central part. According to Jonathan Huener the emphasis on Auschwitz

over Birkenau has created a contrasts between two parts of the camp, which paradoxically has been

also for the benefit of Birkenau: when the main camp has been instrumentalized as a part of Polish

nationalism, Birkenau has stayed as silent place of mourning and meditation and has been preserved as

more authentic part of the camp complex.

Auschwitzland?

Some see the current museum starts to resemble the Disneyland, Van Pelt called it a theme park, and

some say reconstructing or replacing any of its part makes the place unauthentic. Reflecting both the

importance of Auschwitz and its staging as a museum, Tim Cole has written that “´Auschwitz` is to the

´Holocaust` what ´Graceland` is to ´Elvis`”14. It is true that education trough experience has been

stressed when new generations have taken the control of the museum, and the role of the American

researchers, Jewish communities and foundations surely shows in the concept of the museum. New

visitor center building project is realized with the help of international donations, and preservation

work around the camp by the help from Ronald S. Lauder foundation. Project for a new visitors’ center

has been on ice for years because of strained relations between Mayor of Oswiecim, Janusz Marszalek

and the museum, and because of their differing views on planning the area. But many plans have been

made for the centre.

According to the designers of one of the plans for the new visitor service center, “the application of

techniques/ mechanisms which allow for introducing a visitor into the state of solemnity, a deeper

reflection, constitutes a key element of the present design”. Visitors need to be manipulated to the right

kind of mood for a visit: “The design will try to entail the way of thinking, and a change- more or less

momentary – that is to be experienced individually by everybody who visits this unique place” and “the

waiting rooms constitute a buffer between the outer and inner world, the present time and the history

the visitors will shortly encounter.” Visitors are thus expected to be so much alienated of the realities of

Auschwitz that new techniques are needed for reaching the desired mood, “the feeling of alienation,

disorientation, of being at a loss”. “On leaving the waiting room the visitors are already quiet and

14

Tim Cole (2000): Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to Schindler; How History is Bought, Packaged and Sold. London: Routledge, 98.

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concentrated, equipped with headphones and prepared for proceeding along their way. It is vital to

maintain this sort of mental disposition before entering the proper Museum”.15

Another plan stresses the manipulation too: “We believe that this place should be turned into a garden,

a garden of memory, but this garden should be made of concrete. A garden, which reminds the visitors

of the original emptiness and soulless of the place, while at the same time provoking reflection and

meditation [--] On the one hand it is to emphasise the experience of this place as a human logjam, on

the other a feeling of complete isolation of individuals in the crowd.” They stress the fragility of

memory: “As years go by from that terrible period in history, memories will fade.”16

15

Plan presented online (consulted 3.8.2011): http://www.wwaa.pl/en/works/VISITOR-SERVICE Even though in this and other plans the designers see it essential to use manipulation to get the visitors to the right mood for a visit, word manipulation does not have necessary to be taken as negative. Manipulation is one of the basic principles in museum design. For example, John H. Falk and Lynne D. Dearing claim that “Indeed, manipulation of the visitor’s agenda is fundamental to the museum’s ability to create a successful museum experience”. Falk and Dearing (1992): The Museum Experience. Washington: Howells House. 37. 16

Plan presented online (consulted 3.8.2011): http://www.abaranska.com/index/project/id/25/page/architektura-konkurs-auschwitz/lang/en

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And one of the plans speaks explicitly of creating ”negatywne emocje”, negative emotions among the

visitors, who walk the carefully constructed path that ends at the gas chamber, reaching there its

emotional culmination point.17 What seems to be common to all these plans is that they intend to make

visitors to walk in groups via narrow paths flanked by dull walls, imitating the prisoner parades and

their desperate feelings.

It seems to be that experience wished to be produced in visitor is quite similar in all these plans.

Emphasizing the horror, anxiety and fear, they definitely show one side of Auschwitz. But camp was,

of course, much more too. As some of its prisoners managed to survive almost five years there, there

was much that reminded usual everyday life: even if those moments were rare, people at Auschwitz had

love affairs, made jokes, had fun, played football, and drank alcohol. Pressac and Van Pelt have

discussed a lot about the holocaust deniers’ attitudes, and it is quite certain that these kinds of plans do

not help in countering their claims. Deniers will be reminding us that there were swimming pools,

theatres, orchestras and brothels at the camp, so it cannot have been such a bad place museum wants to

claim it was. Unlike the deniers want to claim, none of these facilities were available for ordinary

prisoner, but they were there anyway. There were privileged prisoners, and there were German

prisoners, who had these benefits but who also suffered occasional bad treatment. To include all this in

few hours visit is of course an impossible task, and showing the horror-side of Auschwitz serves also

the ideology of the uniqueness of the Holocaust and shows Auschwitz as its most notorious symbol.

17

Plan presented online (consulted 3.8.2011): http://a-ronet.pl/index.php?mod=nagroda&n_id=2051

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These are the ideas that, it could be said, most of the visitors share, and are the reason for their visit

there, so the proposed concepts for the museum just reinforce these already existing ideas.

But it is certainly the case that the site has not been for years in its original condition; camp was

considerably larger during the time of its operation than is the area of current museum, essential parts

like the gas chamber at the main camp has been reconstructed after the war, and large amounts of

material destroyed by the elements has been changed for new ones. To keep it looking authentic and as

it was in 1945 and at the same time not to replace any parts of the camp is an impossible task, and it

could be asked why to make it look like as it was in 1945 instead of 1943 or 1940.

Some preservation projects are almost grotesque, like the saving and displaying the hair of the deceased

inmates or other personal items they brought with them to the camp. Considering the robbing of the

personal items was one part of dehumanization of the prisoners, and showing them in huge piles at the

museum like was done after every murder operation at the gas chambers, is, to put it pointedly, a bit

like celebrating the efforts of the Germans.18 Showing the shoes and other personal items fitted well to

the Soviet idea of the Holocaust, which put much more stress on economic plundering of the victims

than the Western interpreters, so it is not surprising that shoe piles were first seen at the museums of

Auschwitz and Majdanek. Today the shoes are part of the businesses of the Auschwitz museum, as they

receive funding by lending them to other museums.

18

It is anyhow not a uniquely Holocaust related phenomenon to show the objects of the victims or casualties. For example, in the exhibition “Eyes Wide Open” in 2004 that toured around USA, hundreds of soldiers’ boots were arranged for exhibition to remind people of casualties of Iraq war. In that case shoes were arranged as a field, not in piles, so there is arguably a difference between individuality of every killed soldier and Holocaust victims that are shown as masses, without individuality.

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Luggages of the victims are shown at the museum.

Area that museum occupies today is largely diminished of what was the so called interest zone of the

original camp. Zone extended several miles around the camp proper, and tens of subcamps were

included in the camp structure, some of which of there is today practically no visible sign whatsoever.

All that is left of subcamp Plawy: two fence poles. Photo by Tiergartenstraße 4 Association.

As museum is situated in the middle of the city of Oswiecim, conflicts between the city planners and

museum authorities are inevitable. International attention has drawn for example the plans to build a

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supermarket just a few hundred meters from the gate of the main camp, and to build a discotheque into

the one of the old camp buildings. But many of the old camp buildings has been used for dwelling for

decades already, and conflicts between city planners and museum has been relatively recent

phenomenon, brought in by the international funders.

Arguably the biggest attention was raised by the conflict around convent opened by a group of

Carmelite nuns in one of the old camp buildings, in the so called theatre building where Zyklon-b was

stored when the camp was in operation. For Polish Catholics the site is a place of martyrdom and priest

Maximilian Kolbe who died at Auschwitz has been canonized and declared as saint. In that conflict

culminated the years long battle between Polish catholic nationalists and international Jewish

communities over importance and meaning of the Auschwitz as both parties claim it being especially

their holy place. In the end the nuns were evicted, but conflict between Catholics and Jews continued

for years and ended only after Catholics removed the crosses they erected just outside the camp wall.19

Practically everything that happens today at the site of Auschwitz is worth some kind of a media

attention, and practically every new document found is worth news. Most likely this is partly due to the

need for media attention and marketing because of the still lacking funding But how much Auschwitz is

in the news also reflects its still continuing extraordinary, unique position among the concentration

camps and museums.

Like Van Pelt points out, in a certain way the visit at Auschwitz will be some kind of a disappointment

for most of the visitors. What is seen is just a representation of reality in 1940's, and is inevitably shown

from certain perspective, chosen by the museum curators. What critical visitor perhaps would like to

see is not the total authenticity, but the revealing of the process, to see what parts are authentic and

what is built after the war. In this there is even point from the perspective of countering the holocaust

deniers: it is very often claimed by them that reconstructions are made to fool the public to believe it

happened and that any renovation is a proof of conspiracy.

In the end only an eyewitness can with his or hers personal way of approach bring the experience more

real and closer, even though even there question of perspective is relevant as there was no single

experience of an inmate but every fate was unique and different from others, one prisoner never

experienced all the aspects of Auschwitz. And there is also the gap that exists in language.

19

Of the convent and related issues see Geneviève Zubrzycki, The Crosses of Auschwitz. Nationalism and Religion in Post-Communist Poland. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 2006

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The same problem of representation loom also in written representations, every description is based on

selection and exclusions. "Full" image of Auschwitz cannot be given even within the monumental new

history of the camp, even though it consists over 1500 pages. Reader interested to know every detail

will notice history has more gaps than substance, and it is always up to the reader to fill the gaps unless

one wants to go on into an endless journey trough references and documents. Every reader has his or

hers unique needs and no representation can fulfill the all.

It is also worth to remember that for the many, perhaps even for the most of the visitors Auschwitz is

also a tourist attraction, a site that is just a part of a holiday trip to Cracow or other places, site that

after visit can be crossed out from the list of must-sees. As time goes by, the fates of the victims and

survivors will become part of the past, stories from the history happened long time ago we have no

personal connection. Auschwitz will be normalized. Experience of the visitor has to be made by using

other means, or the decision has to be made to let the camp and what happened there to sink into the

past and oblivion.

According to Van Pelt what the victims would have wanted is impossible to know, because the

survivors cannot speak for the deceased ones. But there are several accounts hidden at the camp during

the war whose authors knew their final moments were at hand and who tell how the events should be

remembered. The saving of the testimonies and memories for the future generations is actually one of

the most central topics in the surviving diaries and other documents written by the victims.

Among others, the Auschwitz Sonderkommando, unit that consisted mostly of Jews and whose task

was to guide the victims to the gas chambers and burn the bodies, wrote and buried near the

crematories several accounts and testimonies of their work. In one them, in a story written by Salmen

Gradowski and compiled during the oblivion of the traces of crimes and destruction of the crematories,

there is a message for the future generations: ”Dear finder, search everywhere, in every inch of soil.

Tens of documents are buried under it, mine and those of other persons, which will throw light on

everything that was happening here.”20 Gradowski hoped that even a drop of what they saw would

become known to the world. Many have for their own reasons a wish to leave the Auschwitz to the

past, but most likely its victims do not share that wish. But how to preserve or reconstruct the site there

is no answer in the writings of the victims, that is can only be decided by the future generations.

20

In Amidst a Nightmare of Crime: Manuscripts of the Sonderkommando, Eds. Bezwinska, Jadwiga and Czech, Danuta Publisher: H. Fertig, New York, 1992 (originallyblished by Oswiecim State Museum, 1973.), 76.