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| You are here: 2000 / Workshops, Panels and Seminars / Workshops on Remembrance and Representation / Workshop 1 on Remembrance, "It Happened There: The Existence and Meaning of Historical Locations" / Presentation by Dr. Teresa Swiebocka | |||||||||
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Report from Workshop 1 on Remembrance and Representation: "It Happened there: the Existence and Meaning of Historical Locations" Presentation by Mr. David Barnouw Presentation by Dr. Jan Munk Presentation by Dr. Robert Sigel Presentation by Dr. Teresa Swiebocka Presentation by Dr. Jonathan Webber Presentation by Dr. James E. Young Presentation by Dr. Teresa Swiebocka Swiebocka, Teresa Presentation by Teresa Swiebocka The twentieth century has been marked by an accumulation of terror and crime unprecedented in human history. A particular intensity was reached in Nazi-occupied Europe during the Second World War. Basic human rights were disregarded. Racism and xenophobia ran to extremes. An effort was undertaken to achieve complete domination over the populations of the occupied countries and to transform them into slaves with no will of their own. The final step in this panorama was the physical liquidation of political opponents, cultural elites, and those who offered active resistance to the Nazi regime, as well as of whole nations that were regarded as unneeded or inferior. The most tragic lot fell to the European Jews, who were marked by the Nazis for total extermination regardless of age, gender, occupation, citizenship, or political views. The vast destruction and human losses inflicted by Nazism changed forever the face of many countries, leaving deep wounds in the collective and individual memory. Nearly all of Europe was marked with the topography of terror and crime. After the war, many such places became museums, memorial sites, or monuments. The greatest of these arose on the grounds of the former Nazi camps.] The Auschwitz camp was one of the most notorious sites of genocide. It served several functions and had a complex, varied history. The largest center for the destruction of the European Jews, it was also the largest concentration camp for prisoners of various nationalities, a source of slave labor, and a place for the looting of personal property. The Nazis sent at least 1,100,000 Jews, almost 150,000 Poles, 23,000 Roma and Sinti, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and tens of thousands of prisoners of other nationalities to Auschwitz. On July 2, 1947–two years after the end of the war–the Polish parliament responded to the needs of the thousands of people who were traveling spontaneously from all over Poland to visit the grounds of the former camp, and to the demands of former prisoners, by enacting a law on the eternal preservation of the grounds and objects. For this purpose, the law also called into existence the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, financed by the Polish Ministry of Culture and Art. The newly created Museum comprised two of the extant parts of the Auschwitz complex: the so-called Main Camp (Auschwitz I) in Oswiecim, and the Birkenau camp (Auschwitz II) in Brzezinka. The Museum grounds amount to a total area of almost 200 hectares, on which stand 150 buildings and objects of various sorts, and almost 300 other ruins associated with the camp. The Museum collections contain thousands of exhibits and effects belonging to the victims and found after liberation, as well as a library and a tremendous volume of camp documents, artistic works, films, and accounts and memoirs by prisoners. The Museum endeavors to carry out a wide range of activities. It oversees the vast grounds and preserves buildings and other camp objects. With the exception of several reconstructions carried out in the early years, no changes are introduced. An effort is made to maintain only what has survived, rather than to build anything or to reconstruct objects that have been destroyed. The Museum is also engaged in research, preparing exhibitions in Poland and abroad, publishing its own titles, and organizing lectures, conferences, symposia and seminars for teachers and students, as well as postgraduate courses for teachers. We are well aware that visitors and pilgrims have different expectations and sensitivities, which can at times be contradictory. On the one hand, the Museum is expected to commemorate what happened here during the Nazi occupation and to serve as a material, physical means of presenting the crimes that were committed. Yet we cannot limit ourselves exclusively to showing how the camp functioned. This place is also humankind's largest cemetery, where the ashes of the people who were murdered are mixed together. When planning how to provide access to the grounds of the former camp, we therefore attempt to strike a balance between historical information and exhibitions, and the seriousness and dignity befitting a cemetery. On the other hand, the Museum attempts to direct the attention of visitors not only towards the very process of extermination, but also towards other aspects of the issue. Above all, we want to show who the victims were–to give them back their names and stories. We want visitors to leave the former camp grounds feeling sympathy–and also understanding how much all of mankind lost because of Auschwitz. We feel that our educational task should be broad enough to provoke further questions about the present as well as the past, about human rights, racism, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia. We feel that it is highly important for visitors to understand that the Auschwitz camp may have been opened in 1940, but the ideological groundwork was laid long before. In educational terms, a visit to the former camp grounds should become a moral lesson and a starting point for further analysis of these phenomena. Plainly, this sort of education can be offered elsewhere, and not only at a memorial site. We feel, however, that the remains of the camp and its vast grounds are an important educational tool. They make it plain that these things really did happen, and create an atmosphere favorable to a deeper encounter with these issues. Many people have commented that they read dozens of books on the subject, but only understood what had really happened here after several hours of direct, almost tangible contact with the vastness of the terrain and the objects still standing. All these years later, interest in the subject is growing, rather than diminishing. More than 25,000,000 people have already visited the grounds of the former camp. While the decided majority have been Poles, the number of visitors from other countries is beginning to rise. This is a place with a message addressed to the whole world. >> Back to top |
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Introduction Opening Session: Messages and speeches Plenary Sessions: Messages and speeches Workshops, Panels and Seminars
Other Activities |
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| For information about this production and the Stockholm International Forum Conference Series please go to www.humanrights.gov.se or contact Information Rosenbad, SE-103 33 Stockholm, Sweden | |||||||||