March 28th, 2010

The annihilation of the European Jews in Birkenau: French survivors of Auschwitz concentration camp call for the establishment of a permanent exhibition in the former extermination camp of Birkenau.

At the general meeting in Paris on 28 March 2010, the French survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp who are involved in the “Union des Deportés d’Auschwitz” called for a museum and exhibition concept for the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial. They want this concept to include and reflect the different viewpoints and memories of Jewish and non-Jewish survivors. This applies in particular to an urgently needed museum and exhibition design in the former extermination camp of Birkenau which should focus on the theme of the annihilation of the European Jews in Birkenau.

In their declaration the survivors say: “For more than half a century the Union des Déportés d’Auschwitz has been organising commemorative journeys or group visits to the camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau. These visits are always conducted in the presence of former deportees who, in quite different ways, provide their very personal accounts of their experiences and tasks in these two camps. They also help the visitors to gain a particular awareness of these specific asprcts… The lack of an exhibition in Birkenau means that, when we are no longer here, there will only be the words of the guides and museum guidebooks to relate what happened in this place: the conditions of survival in the blocks, the brutality, the murder on an industrial scale.”

The General Secretary of the Union des Deportés d’Auschwitz, Raphaël Esrail, added: “This is why there is an urgent need for an exhibition in Birkenau that has been developed by the appropriate Polish authorities and international organisations such as the French Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah, the International Auschwitz Council appointed by the Polish Prime Minister, the International Auschwitz Committee, Jewish organisations and the State Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau.”

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