June 3rd, 2010

Statement on the concept of a major new main exhibition at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and State Museum

Today, Auschwitz has become legendary throughout the world as a place of horror. It is also synonymous with the perpetration of crimes against humanity. Nowadays global media interest often no longer focuses on the actual concrete history of the National Socialist concentration camp complex of 1940 to 1945.

This is a huge problem and it creates difficult task, over fifty years after the founding of the first large main exhibition at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum: the creation of a new main exhibition not only has to reflect the current level of information and research, it also has to do justice to the needs of the over one million people who visit this place each year. A great variety of expectations are placed on the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial, which has meanwhile become a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and these expectations are often formulated with the different concepts and aims of individual interest groups. In all countries, state policy on the culture of remembrance is shaped by national perspectives on history. Historical narratives in Poland differ from those in the USA, Israel, Germany or Russia.

After their liberation the survivors of Auschwitz have lived in places scattered throughout the world, where they have provided their witness accounts to preserve the memory of the extermination camp. Soon after liberation the former prisoners living in Poland secured the camp compounds of Auschwitz Main Camp and Auschwitz-Birkenau. And as early as July 1947 they also ensured that the Polish state established the place as a state memorial. In the following decades Poland’s communist governments maintained the Auschwitz Memorial as the most important national place of remembrance. However, it is thanks to the efforts of the International Auschwitz Committee, which was founded in 1954, that the Memorial has also been an international place of remembrance, as is clearly illustrated by the memorial monument in Birkenau and the national exhibitions.
Even after Poland’s far-reaching break with the international Jewish community, which came as a result of the anti-Semitic policy of 1968 and the subsequent exodus of Polish Jews from their homeland, personal connections with Israel still made it possible to create an exhibition at the Memorial on the history of the Jewish victims.
During the Cold War years the government of the Federal Republic of Germany assumed no responsibility for places of National Socialist extermination in Poland. It was not until the 1980s that contacts developed leading to German-Polish projects with the Auschwitz Memorial. On the German side these efforts were promoted by the support of individuals or organizations, such as Aktion Sühnezeichen-Friedensdienste (Action Reconciliation Service for Peace).

The political changes of 1989 then brought the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial into the focus of the international public. In 1990 the International Council of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum was founded under the chairmanship of Wladyslaw Bartoszewski which gave the survivors of Auschwitz an important voice in the debates about future concepts and the shaping of the Memorial. The following years revealed how different the ideas were and how slowly individual projects could be realized.
But now, two decades later, the Memorial can look back in pride at the accomplished achievements. Projects have been successfully carried out to secure the buildings and artefacts at Auschwitz Main Camp and the structural remains at Auschwitz-Birkenau. In addition to this a system of information panels was developed at Birkenau. A moving exhibition was installed in the so-called Central Sauna, the old “Jews’ Ramp” was made identifiable again as part of the Memorial area. It was also possible to extend the education department, thanks to international support.

What remains now as a major project is the development of a new main exhibition. In addition to reaching a general consensus on the thematic areas of emphasis, the greatest and most difficult task lies in depicting the genocide that was committed against European Jews in Auschwitz II (Birkenau) and representing it in an exhibition in Auschwitz I (Main Camp.

The concept, which was presented in November 2009, envisages three sections for the new exhibition:

1. The institution of the camp complex Auschwitz-Birkenau. This section is designed to show the setting-up, the extension, the structures and functions of the camp.
   
   In this context it is important to consider that visitors without any previous knowledge are rarely stimulated by dry accounts of structural history. Experiences at numerous memorial sites, which have created new main exhibitions in the last two decades, have shown that the interest of young visitors in such topics can be awakened above all by the depiction of individual destinies. Perhaps it would be possible to connect the initial erection of the camp with the lives and fates of the first prisoners.
   
   
2. The murder of the Jews of Europe
   
   
3. The lives of the prisoners
   
   The stories of sections two and three overlap in certain thematic areas. Section 2 has to depict the unique crime of industrially organized murder committed against the Jews of Europe. But it also has to show the fate of the Jewish prisoners who were ‘selected’ for work, as well as their subsequent histories (transports, death marches). In addition to this, the history of resistance in Auschwitz cannot be restricted solely to Section 3.
   
   Up to now a number of important themes are still missing: the history of the sub-camps, the evacuation, the liberation and the post-war history.
   Plans are also being considered to create the opportunity for work groups to carry out in-depth studies into these thematic areas. However, in view of the significance and scope of these themes in the history of the camp, the needs for research crucially extend beyond the establishment of these initial research opportunities.
   
   Last, but not least, we again have to stress the great importance of the Auschwitz survivors’ first-hand accounts and the wealth of insights and information they have already provided about the extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Perhaps it would be possible to create a place within the framework of the exhibition, where visitors can watch or listen to film and sound recordings with the personal accounts of Auschwitz survivors.

Barbara Distel

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