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Auschwitz – Birkenau Museum

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Hungarian exhibit at Auschwitz-Birkenau museum.
Hungarian exhibit at Auschwitz-Birkenau museum.
Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest of German Nazi Concentration and built in German occupied Polish territory. Have been in operation from May 1940 to January 1945, within this time the camp system was developed to over 45 sub-camps, abusing the slave workforce of Auschwitz prisoners.

Since 1942 Birkenau was chosen to be the mass extermination center of European Jews. It is estimated that over 1,3 million people, mainly Jews were murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Since 1947 territory of the former camp was changed into a State Museum. The remaining former camp structures spread over vast territory and the general number of victims as well as their very diversified nationality led Auschwitz to be recognized as the main symbol of Holocaust in the world.

Each year the the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum is visited by approximately 1 million visitors, who choose to learn the history of the Holocaust by familiarizing themselves with the dark history of this death camp. In 2005 the International Center of Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust was created, in order to raise historical awareness about the Shoah and promote values of dialogue among nations.

The regular guided tour through the territories of Auschwitz and Birkenau lasts approximately 3,5 hours. This time can be extended up to even few days if there is a need for more detailed or more personal approach.

The following article is an attempt to look into the current state of educational processes taking place during a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum. There is a multitude of exceptionally detailed literature on most of the historical aspects of Auschwitz-Birkenau, but very few short, condensed and descriptive texts which might be a good introductory manual of the site for the average visitor who has but limited knowledge.

Importance of the site

Auschwitz and the iconography connected to it are the first things that come to anyone’s mind when they think about the Holocaust. Why? There are several reasons to consider:

Reason number one: Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest and the most efficient of all the German Nazi concentration and extermination camps built in occupied Europe. It is not only the sheer number of victims -close to 1.5 million-which make it unique. It was one of the only two Nazi camps where the perpetrators merged two functions in one place: the function of mass incarceration of slave labor and the function of mass extermination of people in gas chambers. This is particularly important because between 1942 and 1944 when the gas chambers at Birkenau were active there were as many as 120,000 prisoners in the vicinity working as the slave workers of the concentration camp. They witnessed the selections and mass extermination. Of course towards the end of the camp, most of those inmates would have been killed or transferred, but still we estimate today that in total in 1945 there were tens of thousands of Auschwitz survivors alive in various parts of Poland and Germany. Those people had their stories, their testimonies; they went on to write books and to chronicle their lives in the camp. Their voices and the name Auschwitz could be heard globally; Auschwitz-Birkenau became the synonym of the Holocaust.

On the contrary, little has been heard and few people today know about the other German Nazi camps– those built for the sole purpose of extermination. They were built in sparsely populated territories, often hidden in the forests far from Western Europe. These extermination camps were built to operate temporarily; their sole function was to kill as many Jews as possible from Nazi-occupied Poland and designed to be completely dismantled after the task was accomplished.

This is a list of those extermination camps, with approximate time of operation , number of victims and number of survivors in 1945:

Chelmno – Kulmhof – 16 months of operation 150.000 people killed. 3 survivors

Belzec – 12 months of operation 500.000 people killed. 7 survivors

Sobibor – 19 months of operation 200.000 people killed. 100 survivors

Treblinka – 13 months of operation 800.000 people killed. 60 survivors

The striking thing is that when you visit those places today, almost nothing is visible of those camps former existence. The German crime was not only the murder of those people, but also the eradication of the memory of their very existence and the manner in which they were killed. This was meant to be the perfect crime, and its cover-up took a tremendous effort. There were no images left which could be used as iconography in the way we now perceive and remember the Holocaust. The low numbers of survivors ensured that their stories rarely became part of the global narrative of the Holocaust and the general commemorative culture. In this way Auschwitz with its relatively high number of survivors is unique and well documented.

Reason number two for Auschwitz becoming the iconic Holocaust site would be how relatively well-preserved are most of the former camp structures and the remaining artifacts like documents, plundered victim’s property, and the quantities of hair shorn from its victims. Visiting Auschwitz – Birkenau Museum we can physically see the buildings, execution sites, imprisonment places and thousands of well preserved objects. This tangible visual help is very important to imagine and recreate the historical time when Auschwitz was functioning. It is possible to locate certain survivors narratives or camp stories in the remaining camp space.

The buildings and objects are also the tangible proof of the crime committed, of particular importance because with every day and every generation we are more distanced from the Holocaust itself. This is particularly true with the Crematorium – Gas Chamber number I in Auschwitz: today it is possible to enter inside to see the gas chamber and the cremation ovens. This is one of the two of such German Nazi-built structures standing in the world today, which assumes a tremendous burden of proof in the time of the growing wave of Holocaust revisionism.

Equally important are the ruins of Crematorium Gas Chamber number II, III, IV and V located away from the Birkenau iconic main entrance gate.. Though they were blown up by the retreating Germans in 1945, they still communicate how meticulous were the perpetrators, the details of extermination process, and their enormous size. All of those are preserved to be seen by the millions of visitors because of the very conscious decision taken in 1947 to establish Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum on the site of the former German Nazi camp.

Auschwitz-Birkenau is now the best-preserved and best-documented former Nazi concentration-extermination camp. All this material proof gains in importance as we are probably the last generation to meet and hear the live stories of the Holocaust survivors. .

The third reason why Auschwitz is the dominant site in the general memory of the Holocaust is the fact the German Nazis decided to make it the central destination of prisoners and later victims from all over Europe. Most of the 3.3 million Polish Jews were exterminated in the already mentioned immediate extermination camps. Auschwitz-Birkenau capacity was reserved mostly for Jewish transports from Western, Northern and Southern Europe.

No other camp had so many nationalities crowded in one place, no other camp through its lethal operation would be covering almost the entire territory of Europe. There were Jews deported to Auschwitz from as far as Oslo in Norway, the Greek island of Corfu and the distant French Atlantic Coast. After the war, when the European Jewish and non-Jewish survivors began to look for their missing relatives, the answer was almost always Auschwitz-Birkenau. In this way, after the war those two words became the incarnation of evil and the icon of the German Nazi genocide in the course of WW II.

Visit and education – challenges

Today most of the visitors to Auschwitz Museum participate in a guided tour that lasts an average of 3 hours. Within this time they spend 2 hours in Auschwitz I, where most of the historical exhibit and artifacts are located, then they are transferred for one additional hour for a guided tour of the territory of Auschwitz II – Birkenau. Those 3 hours are the necessary minimum to get familiar with the camp chronology, history and activity and they constitute the very core of the institutional education process offered to visitors.

The guides offered by the Museum today are drawn from a very highly qualified pool of Auschwitz-Birkenau experts who, in most cases have to be very selective with the presented historical material in order to keep within the time frames of the guided visit. In order to make the most of this time with the Museum guide it is recommended that visitors beforehand acquaint themselves with at least some basic chronology and factual orientation to be filled in with the guide narration. In this way the visitor can spend the time on questions and discussion with the guide which always opens a whole new historical reality. Nowadays such basic information can be easily searched on-line. .

Auschwitz II Birkenau today at the first glance is a large open air museum made of ruins of buildings or remaining camp structures scattered over a large area of 170 hectares (approx 420 acres). Almost the only way to get the sense of the entire territory is to enter the central watch tower over the main entrance gate. But the most important places in Birkenau are either barely visible because of being ruined or not visible at all. It is only after a one km walk from the main gate when we start to enter into the site of former German Nazi mass genocide.

It is the very distant reaches of Birkenau where the ruins of massive Crematoriums and Gas Chambers number II, III, IV and V are located. It is in the distant reaches of Birkenau where the ashes of majority of the camp victims are being deposited in what is today the green, serene and almost idyllic forest, landing and water pond landscape. It is there where the largest cemetery known to humanity is located and it is only due to German Nazi determination to cover up the crime that little evidence is left today.

The illusive serenity of the site should always be contrasted with the established historical facts. This place where what is invisible is the most important demands that the visitors pay tribute to the camp victims. The place itself makes these demands in a very metaphysical way because facing the enormous crime and having cognitive difficulties in understanding and explaining its enormity, we always retreat to certain culturally dictated commemorative gestures.

Responsibility for Auschwitz and history behind it is probably the most important task of the education process in which every visitor participates.. The awareness means little when it is not followed by responsibility. Every visitor must feel responsible for bringing a little of Auschwitz-Birkenau message back home from the visit. In some way every visitor is becoming the modern witness of the past so precious in the time when the Auschwitz survivors are passing away. The time spent at Auschwitz-Birkenau can be given a special meaning when the visitor can evaluate the learned history into his or her own life experience to have a more global look at the reality we all live in.

Responsibility means recognizing the consequences of our moral choices and realizing the sort of extremes that humanity and we as individuals are capable of under certain circumstances. All in all, the historical experience of Auschwitz is one of the paths of humanity and we shall not forget about it. Without this process the visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau has no effect on the current world which can lead to repeating of the history on such scale in the future.

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