13 December 2006 / Source: n-tv

Dispute about Memorial

Auschwitz - a Museum?

It is only a few months ago that Piotr Cywinski became director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial. But his announcement that he wants to change the conception of the exhibition in future and create a more modern museum has caused quite a stir. Above all holocaust survivors and other former detainees reacted heavily. Auschwitz must never be a place guided by modern exhibition methods. The history of the place must always be put to the fore, survivors from Israel demand.
“ This is the oldest holocaust exhibition throughout the world”, Cywinsky defends his idea, “we really have to change it.”
Indeed, the way in which the Auschwitz Memorial imparts the systematic extermination of the European Jews by the Nazis to the visitors seems to be antiquated. Poster walls and dull black-and-white photos, rather scanty explanations in Polish and English – this conception seems to be outdated in the era of multimedia presentations.

Former detainees however argue that those people who come to Auschwitz in the first place do not come to visit a museum but to see “a low of human history”.
Once you have seen the silent witnesses of the extermination collected in one of the camp blocks – the piles of human hair, spectacles, shoes and suitcases that belonged to the more than one million people murdered there by the National-Socialists, you will never forget these impressions. Once you have stood in front of the loading platform of Birkenau, the original extermination camp, you will get an impression of the enormous size of the camp, of the unreal contrast between the innocent looking lawn spreading over the area where the burnt-down detainees’ huts used to be and the grey looking bone particles still visible in the earth.

“The strongest force of this museum is its authenticity”, says former Auschwitz detainee Noach Flug, now President of the International Auschwitz Committee.
“ It is essential for us that this place remains as it was in January 1945 – with its gas chambers, its crematoriums, its shower rooms and blocks for the detainees”.
But the members of the International Auschwitz Committee are also agreed that some things have to be changed.
“ Above all the remnants of the Communist exhibition conception”, Flug underlined. In Communist Poland the emphasis was above all placed on the sufferings of the Polish population and on the struggle of the Communist resistance movement whereas the holocaust and its whole extent were neglected. The Nazis murdered altogether about six million Jews.

The need for gentle changes is also seen by Christoph Heubner, board member of the International Auschwitz Committee, too. Thus, during the past few years, France, Hungary and other countries had revised their exhibitions on the sufferings of their citizens in Auschwitz in an impressive way, while the main exhibition in Auschwitz remained in stagnation. Besides, there is a growing number of requests from countries like Slovakia and the Baltic states that now want to “bring out their own features in the exhibition, too”.

A newly conceived exhibition, according to the wish of the International Auschwitz Committee, must go more into the life of the detainees. “The visitors should learn more about our daily life, the mutual assistance, the resistance organised in the camp”, is the wish of Flug.

Therefore the International Auschwitz Committee has principally agreed to a change. The future conception of the exhibition, however, must be agreed with the survivors. And another thing is also important to Flug: “It is necessary to record video interviews with us, the former detainees, to ensure that our stories and our testimonies will survive when we are no longer alive.”

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