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SAVING AUTHENTICITY —COMMON RESPONSIBILITY 66TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE LIBERATION OF AUSCHWITZ

no. 26 February 2011

Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 26, February 2011

EDITORIAL BOARD:

Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine

PUBLISHER: Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum www.auschwitz.org.pl

PARTNERS: Jewish Center www.ajcf.pl

Center for Dialogue and Prayer Foundation www.centrum-dialogu.oswiecim.pl

International Youth Meeting Center www.mdsm.pl

IN COOPERATION WITH: Kasztelania www.kasztelania.pl State Higher Vocational School ol in Oświęcim www.pwsz-oswiecim.pl i i l Editorial address: „Oś – Oświęcim, Ludzie, Historia, Kultura” Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau ul. Więźniów Oświęcimia 20 32-603 Oświęcim e-mail: os@auschwitz.org.pl

The February issue of Oś is dominated by the events of January 27, the 66th anniversary of the liberation of the former Nazi German Concentration and Extermination Camp of Auschwitz. In this issue you can read an account of the ceremony and the most important words that were uttered during the event—speeches by former prisoners as well as Presidents: of the Republic of Poland, Bronisław Komorowski, and the Federal Republic of Germany, Christian Wulff. We also write about the visit by the presidents to the International Youth Meeting Center.

We handed over two pages of the monthly to participants of the project entitled Memory and Commemoration in the Era of Web 2.0. In the January seminar, organized by Maximilian Kolbe Werk, young people from several countries took part. The articles in Oś are the first effects of the group’s work in the press.

We would like to draw your attention to an interview with one of the participants of the project, Mustafa Yakupov from Macedonia, as well as the photo essay.

In addition to that, in this volume you can also read about an exhibit of items donated by former prisoners and their

families to the Auschwitz Memorial Site.

The exhibition can be viewed at the Museum, and also on the website: www. auschwitz.org.pl.

Presently, we also invite you for the March review of films on Jewish topics at the Jewish Center. At the Monday screenings, as many as 14 films will be shown from the International Film Festival Jewish Motifs. The monthly Oś is one of the media patrons of the event.

Paweł Sawicki Editor-in-chief os@auschwitz.org.pl

A GALLERY OF THE 20TH CENTURY Within the confines of the history of a given city, you can take on one of its individual parts—squares, streets, and give them particular attention.

And here, where we live, such an initiative has taken shape—the detailed description of one of our streets: Jagiełły Street, divided into its pre-War, Wartime, and post-War history. Because this used to be “my street,” here are two small peeks into its early post-War years.

In the 1950s, the villa of Kulczycki family, neighboring the “small palace,” and the two tenement buildings next door were taken over by the most important government department of that period: the Department of Security [Urząd Bezpieczeństwa]!

Among the many employees, who, once the time came, left their place of work on foot—because having a private automobile was out of the question then—there were two… very pretty girls!

Perhaps they were humble secretaries or typists, but maybe they were vitally important assistants of their demanding bosses. Each day, in the company of their uniformed and civilian clothed colleagues, they walked past our tenement building. During the years of general poverty and greyness, they were something interesting and attractive. They drew attention to themselves with their beauty, their figure, and the way they dressed. One day, I noticed them from the balcony of our home, and I said to my father, who was standing next to me: “Those girls are pretty!” And all he said was: “So, they’re even more dangerous!”

The second episode occurred in the vicinity of the first. Back then, within the system of state radio broadcasts, there was a system of so-called cable radio: speakers connected by cable to a local headquarters that transmitted a single channel of Polish Radio. These were commonly known as a “kołchoźnik” [a kolkhoz worker], and I am not sure if this was because of a foreign word affiliation, or because of “the high quality and professional standard.” Where we lived, the

“kołchoźnik” headquarters was in the post office building on Jagiełły Street. For some time, the local radio system broadcast its city information programs. They were prepared by a “crazed reporter”—a young man, who always wore an undone red tie, whose image was reflected in the window when looking from the street as he constantly rushed and ran! The effect of his “editorial liveliness” was a weekly program, lasting more than a dozen minutes, dedicated to life in the city, more pre-

cisely: the life and activities of respective [Communist] party cells within the city’s workplaces. But this ended quickly! The “Polish thaw” came in October of 1956, with Comrade “Wiesław” at its fore. The “crazed reporter,” together with his program disappeared from the broadcasts, entering the… history of the city and the street! And cable radio did rather well for a good number of years!

Andrzej Winogrodzki

Photo from Mirosław Ganobis’s Collection

Editor: Paweł Sawicki Editorial secretary: Agnieszka Juskowiak-Sawicka Editorial board: Bartosz Bartyzel Wiktor Boberek Jarek Mensfelt Olga Onyszkiewicz Jadwiga Pinderska-Lech Artur Szyndler Columnist: Mirosław Ganobis Design and layout: Agnieszka Matuła, Grafikon Translations: David R. Kennedy Proofreading: Beata Kłos Cover: Paweł Sawicki Photographer: Paweł Sawicki

EDITORIAL

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Jagiełły Street. Photo courtesy of Henryk Dera

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Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 26, February 2011

WE ARE FACING THE CHALLENGE OF SAVING THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE AUSCHWITZ MEMORIAL

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“I wish to help preserve this testimony as a living symbol of genocide and intolerance.

I do so in remembrance of all the victims who died in Auschwitz-Birkenau and of those who survived this hell.

I do so in view of what happened, what is happening now, and what could happen again,” we read in the Pledge, which is available to be signed on a special page at the Auschwitz Museum website.

Taking part in the anniversary of liberation were former Auschwitz prisoners, the presidents of the Republic of Poland and the Federal Republic of Germany, parliamentarians from the Polish Sejm and the German Bundestag, members of the diplomatic corps, clergy, regional and local officials and community leaders, invited guests, and people wishing to honor the memory of the victims of the German Nazis.

In their remarks, speakers drew attention to the need to preserve the Memorial for future generations. Former

Auschwitz prisoners Eva Umlauf, August Kowalczyk, and Professor Władysław Bartoszewski were among those who addressed the gathering.

“By preventing Auschwitz from decay we give a signal for resistance against the Holocaust, which, according to the plans of the Nazis, should be so total that no trace of the victims would remain, not even of the extermination process. For this purpose we established the Foundation Auschwitz-Birkenau, which collects money for the preservation of the former camp. We are appealing to the whole world for support of this enterprise,” said Professor Bartoszewski.

“Auschwitz plays an exceptionally important role as a museum. I am pleased that we are approaching the moment when we will be able to say that, in the financial sense and in the organizational sense, this place will be permanently secure. It will function permanently not

Photo: Paweł Sawicki

anuary 27, 2011 marks the passage of 66 years since the liberation of the German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp Auschwitz. During the anniversary observances Professor Władysław Bartoszewski, former prisoner and initiator of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, addressed a special Appeal to the entire world for help in maintaining the authentic original remains of the former camp.

only as a great affront to the conscience, not only as the unhealed wound, but also as a place for thinking together about the future of the world and about the future of humanity,” said Polish President Bronisław Komorowski.

Germany has contributed €60 million in support of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, and the country’s president stressed that the name “Auschwitz,” like no

other, symbolizes the crimes that the Germans committed against millions of human beings. “Unlike anything else, the name «Auschwitz» stands for the crimes perpetrated by Germans against millions of human beings. They fill us Germans with disgust and shame. They lay upon us a historical responsibility that is independent of individual guilt,” said German President Christian Wulff.

THE ADDRESS BY PROF. WŁADYSŁAW BARTOSZEWSKI Ladies and Gentlemen,

Photo: Paweł Sawicki

It happened seventy years ago, on Septembe r 21, 1940, in Warsaw. I was eighteen years old, when the Germans crammed me, together with more than one thousand fellow sufferers, into a box car. The train departed toward the unknown. We did not know that our destination was the concentration camp of Auschwitz. But even if we had known about it, we would not have had an idea about this place.

Next day none of us, lined up for roll-call, could imagine that after the first phase, when mostly Polish

political prisoners were committed to this camp, also prisoners of war, soldiers of the Red Army would arrive. That thereafter women would come—first Polish, later also those from other nations.

That the camps of Birkenau and Monowitz would be established, together with a network of smaller sub-camps, and that here the total annihilation of the European Jews, among them also the victims of “Operation Reinhardt,” would begin, as well as that of the Romanies, which all is subsumed with the notion of “Genocide” and as such has found entry into history.

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We, the survivors, have been trying hard during our whole life to fulfill our commitment to those who were mercilessly murdered at Auschwitz. We bear witness to the infernal events and we try hard to prevent even the tiniest piece of memory from falling into oblivion, the memory not only of those victims whose names are known, but also of the thousands of slain children, men, and women who most probably will remain forever unknown. We have believed that Auschwitz obliges also the following generations to live together in respect for the dignity of man, as well as to actively counter all manifestations of hate. Here, at the biggest cemetery—without graves—of the Old Continent it can be seen clearly which are the foundations upon which we must build the European and the Global Community.

The last among us former prisoners are about to leave forever. One day these ceremonies will be held without the participation of former prisoners, their families, their relatives. Our testimonies and reports will remain. It is, however, of utmost and invaluable importance that the place of memory itself

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Jerzy Buzek, President of the European Parliament, sent a special letter to those in attendance at the ceremony.

“I call on all countries to commit themselves to maintaining this special place. By supporting Auschwitz-Birkenau financially, we support the testimony of our terrible past,” he wrote. “Even in times of crisis, or perhaps especially in times of crisis, we must uphold the memory of

will be preserved in its physical appearance: the “blocks,” the huts, the ramp and the ruins of gas chambers and crematoria, as well as those thousands of objects stolen from the murdered—suitcases, shoes, spectacles, toothbrushes.

They are the silent witnesses of the tragedy, heart-rendering proof of the crimes, sacred relics of the slain.

By preventing Auschwitz from decay we give a signal for resistance against the Holocaust, which, according to the plans of the Nazis, should be so total that no trace of the victims would remain, not even of the extermination process. For this purpose we established the Foundation Auschwitz-Birkenau, which collects money for the preservation of the former camp. We are appealing to the whole world for support of this enterprise.

Auschwitz-Birkenau is no ordinary museum of martyrdom. It is a place of murder. A cemetery. It must remain an eternally burning sore in the flesh of mankind. On occasion of this ceremony I have always reminded the audience that we must do everything within our power that the words of the Book of Job—a book held in high esteem by Jews as well as Christians—will be fulfilled: “O earth, cover not thou my blood, and let my cry have no place!”

what people are capable of doing. We cannot erase this from our memory.”

During the ceremony there was also talk of the need to prevent similar things from happening today and in the future. “We must do everything within our power to prevent a repetition of this tragic event. We must combat all manifestations of racism, antisemitism, xenophobia, and hate that could lead to a new genocide. We believe that commemorating the victims of the Holocaust will be a successful lesson to

this purpose,” stressed Zvi Rav-Ner, the Ambassador of Israel.

Representing the Roma community, Romani Rose said that human rights and the rights of minorities are inseparable. “For centuries, Sinti and Romanies have been residents of the countries of Europe. They are an integral part of European history and culture. Discrimination, rabble-rousing motivated by racism, and violence against Sinti and Romanies must be ostracized as rigorously as the various manifestations of

antisemitism by those who are politically responsible and by the European institutions. This is the lesson to be learnt from Auschwitz,” he said.

The ceremonies concluded at the Monument to the Victims of the Camp, where those in attendance placed candles commemorating the victims of Auschwitz while rabbis and clergy of the various Christian faiths joined together in reading the 42nd Psalm

Photo: Paweł Sawicki

Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 26, February 2011

THE SPEECH OF AUGUST KOWALCZYK Bunawerke’s march through the town of Oświęcim. But only for the first time. Later on it was easier, especially when they were returning from work at Dwory.

The most frequently repeated words: B-u-r-i-a-l! B-u-r-i-a-l-s!

We carried those who had died from exhaustion, from work exceeding their physical strength, from a kapo’s club, or an SS man’s bullet. A scraping, a shuffling burial. The corpses of the fallen, lifelessly hanging down, were barefooted. Their shoes were carried separately. So Death, captured in this piece of wood, simulated a coffin, a little casket.

The clogs—the management of IG Farben Auschwitz confirmed—are limiting the worker’s performance.

One began to change them into various shoes from Army surplus. Shoes from dead people were taken, shoes from the so-called “Canada.”

So it was done ... !

From the ceiling of the basement, water drops were running down, along the wall of Block 4. Joining they created tiny rivulets, which were flowing the faster, the more they were approaching the floor. Block #4 was the first of the newly built “residential blocks” and opened in December. In the basement there was one of the rooms. My room. The new paper pallets, filled with fresh straw and spread out along the wall, got soaked with water.

Müller and I had our two meters of concrete floor under the window in the basement. There we laid down our common pallet. We dragged it like a sack of potatoes. It was heavy and wet. Our wooden clogs, holenderki, wrapped into our trousers, served as pillows. We had one blanket for the

Photo: Paweł Sawicki

The town.

In the morning.

In fact, some time earlier—dawn is rising above the town, which is slowly leaving its gentle rhythm of awakening.

Man is changing the feebleness of rest to a hurry, accompanied by the recurring sounds of everyday life, so well known that they have become nearly imperceptible. Above this town, Oświęcim, however, a sound was born, to which the locals, in the beginning, could not give a name—and through this town Death was gliding in wooden clogs, holenderki, Shoes of Death.

—Where have you been, at that time— and you, comrade with a number— and you, who arrived together with your granddad? And you, who knew history only from school textbooks— no, you haven’t yet been with us.

Where have you all been, in the spring of 1941 at dawn?

Do you know that, at that time, the town on the banks of the Soła river was almost becoming S-h-u-f-f-l-e-t-o-w-n, a place totally left to Death lurking in wooden shoes and creeping closely above the ground?

Man had little chance to survive the day that was just breaking. Every step was a mine that could go off through the disgraceful action of a kapo or an SS man. Blows were coming and going. Clubs and rifle butts. But he only was stumbling.

Once again and a second time, and then he didn’t lift his legs any more.

Shuffling he went ahead, with the deadly piece of wood on his feet. And the locals could not give a name to this sound, to this scraping noise—in the beginning isolated, later collectively—on the first day of the Kommando

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two of us. Sitting halfway upright and leaning against the wall, we spent this memorable evening in silence. We were afraid of the words that desperately were pushing toward our lips. It was Christmas Eve 1941.

The room, covered with pallets, was filled with the longing, with the desperation of those who remembered previous Christmas Eves in liberty. At a certain moment, I noticed a prisoner with a green triangle. He went past us until the end of the room, returned, and stopped before our pallet.

—What’s your name? — he asked me in German.

—August.

—Do you like potato fritters?

My eyes surely expressed astonishment. Müller even burst out laughing.

—Yes, I do—I said resolutely, though with an undertone of suspiciousness.

The German reached under his coat and drew a mess tin from under his arm.

—That’s for you and your comrade.

Merry Christmas!

—I don’t see your shoes—he suddenly said in a casual tone.

—My clogs are under my head.

—I’ll be back in a few minutes for the mess tin. Enjoy your meal!

Müller and I “broke” the last potato fritter like a wafer. He was thinking of this family at Radom, and I of mine at Mielec and Dębica. Our benefactor returned. He took the mess tin and laid a pair of leather jackboots upon my blanket.

—May they serve you, August, and bring you home safe and sound.— And he disappeared!

Müller gazed in disbelief after him.

—An angel with a green triangle—he whispered.

That was the one and only time I met him. I never saw him before, and I have never seen him later. The angel was a German, a common criminal (green triangle), who appeared on Christmas Eve 1941, fed us with potato fritters, gave me a pair of leather boots and disappeared, for sure, to his “heaven,” which he probably had within himself.

His wish, “May these boots bring you home safe and sound,” however, was only partially fulfilled.

They brought me half a year later to the Königsgraben drainage ditch, from where I escaped in a mass breakout during the uprising of the penal company. The “Christmas boots,” however, remained in the brushwood at the banks of the Vistula. I swam through

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the river barefoot. Here the dogs lost my traces. It is impossible today to elude the really magic meaning of shoes in the life of a work slave of the Third Reich and IG Farben Auschwitz.

With certainty one cannot foresee the role objects are playing in our lives, and I even dare say, nor what their lives mean in our life.

Thirty years had passed, when the “Christmas boots” reappeared. In the 1970s an East German company from Babelsberg was shooting scenes of the film Die Bilder des Zeugen Schattmann (The pictures of witness Schattmann) on the premises of the Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was about the history of a Jewish couple in the Auschwitz concentration camp. The offer to play a prisoner, after having played SS men in films and in television for many years, was tempting. An important role played the fact that I had my head shaven—at that time, I was playing the Mephisto in Goethe’s Faust on stage. I went to a casting session. It was the time of the transition from winter to spring. Rests of snow were lying between the blocks. The film team had occupied Block 8. Once upon a time my block. My former room was serving as the costume depository. I did not have a problem with choosing the striped prisoner’s dress. I protested, however, when I was asked to choose clogs, holenderki, from a huge pile.

—Only leather boots!

The costume designer looked suspiciously at me, like at that kind of an actor, who does not yet know what he will play, but already has his own ideas how to do it.

—Excuse me, Sir, I prepared myself very carefully for this film, I studied the documents, and I am insisting on clogs.

I reached for my wallet, in which I had my “Auschwitz trinity”: in profile, en face, and with the prisoner number.

Historic photographs. I stuck them up at the frame of the looking glass.

—These are my documents.

It struck like a bombshell. From that moment I spent many extra hours with the German team, telling my story, my memories. I concluded my tale with the “Christmas boots.” This was the real end of the Shoes of Death, the wooden clogs, which had almost buried Oświęcim under their shuffle—the town on the banks of the Soła river, the town that bears a s-t-i-g-m-a in the history of mankind.

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Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 26, February 2011

THE SPEECH BY EVA UMLAUF imagine something other than me being who I was.

—On the other hand, I felt with sensibility that a miracle must be something very extraordinary, because I felt, in my soul, pride and happiness to be one.

Of course I realized the politically explosive nature of these exclamations only much later. With the benefit of hindsight I can now say that surviving those times, and later leading a seemingly normal life, really has been a miracle.

I do not have conscious memories of my first years of life, which I spent in the Novaky work camp, where I was born in December 1942, and in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

But I have deep unconscious bodyand-soul memories of them.

—My infantile body embodied, incorporated into itself, neglect, hunger, serious diseases and threats of annihilation, inflicted on it.

—Human depreciation, mortal agony, and horror, forced upon my soul, were unconsciously stored. Any time they can be “recalled.”

For a child, its mother is the center of the world, outside or within a camp. Under this aspect my “child’s world behind the electrified wire”

Photo: Paweł Sawicki

Your Excellencies, Dear Mr. Director, Ladies and Gentlemen, You discovered me as one of the youngest individuals who were tattooed with their prisoner number at Auschwitz, and you asked me to deliver a speech here. I will do this, though I’ll do it with a lot of mixed feelings—you certainly will understand. Well, I accepted the challenge, and I am now asking you to follow my brief personal reflections with an open heart and a willingness toward understanding.

When I was a child, I believed ... , yes, I even was nearly certain ... to be “a miracle,” although I did not know what this meant in reality.

When my mother, my sister, and I, after our return from Auschwitz were walking through the streets of our town, more often than not we were welcomed with disbelief: “What a miracle—you’re still alive!”

These encounters belong to my first memories. They made a firm impression on me, because I often racked my brains trying to find out what the adults would say with this.

—On the one hand, it went without saying for me that I was I, that is to say, a miracle—anyway, I could not

was seemingly in order, since I had my mother. But I did not have a mother free from worries: —her own mortal agony in the camps, —the burden weighing heavily upon her during the transports, —her worrying about me and, later on, also about my sister, who today is present here, too, —her mourning for my father, her husband, murdered during the death march, and —the permanent, everyday threats in the camp, which she confronted with cleverness.

All this did not remain hidden from me, who deeply felt for her. It became my “legacy of feelings,” a legacy with which I am preoccupied still today, and by which also my children, who long since have grown up, are transgenerationally affected.

My mother, full of energy and never losing heart, was the guarantor for our survival.

—In the camps of Sered, Novaky, and Auschwitz, she remained imperturbable, firm as a rock.

—In the camp hospital, she even survived a serious jaundice, though being pregnant.

—Although she herself was sick, she took care that I, who was seriously ill at Auschwitz at the same time, would recover.

—She took a boy of about four years, who had been lost under chaotic circumstances, into our family.

With great difficulty she eventually found his relatives.

It is written in the Old Testament: “He who saves a single human soul, saves the whole world.” Though my mother herself was cruelly maltreated, she acted according to this maxim, which sometimes appears nearly unreal to me, but she, indeed, grew up to a symbol of tremendous human greatness. Two days before we, on November 2, 1944, arrived at Auschwitz, an order had been given that as of then the newly arrived should only be tattooed with camp numbers, but no more gassed, since there was no more sufficient time

for gassing. It was a deciding coincidence for our survival.

When I imagine that many thousand Slovak men and women were deported to Auschwitz and that only a few hundred returned, I understand the neighbors well, when they said that it was “a miracle” to see us alive in the street.

We who returned, survived at the expense of being the living milestones of a never ending way of suffering.

Maybe for that reason I use to react with strong emotions, when I am being addressed as “former prisoner.”

Maybe these words are functionally correct in the context of the organization of a concentration camp—I was imprisoned, for sure. I find it, however, horrible that by this usage of speech, human suffering and inhumanity again are denied, surely unconsciously and even by wellmeaning people.

I would wish for myself that that which once happened will be understood and mentally processed to prevent further —personal suffering, —breakdowns of civilization in society, —inhumane systems of violence, and —transfer of the legacies of feelings to the next generations and to society as a whole.

For me personally it is very important to make crystal clear that, in the wake of the Nazi period, —those who were threatened behind the electrified wire with violence and death, are carrying with them the bitter legacies of feelings from the experience of violence, but that also —those who seemingly were living in peace before the electrified wire, with difficulty are carrying the legacy of feelings inherited from the burden of the misdeeds.

Both sides, the perpetrators as well as the victims, will pass these legacies of feelings to their respective offspring, until these legacies of feelings have been courageously and consciously worked through.

THE ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF POLAND BRONISŁAW KOMOROWSKI Here in Auschwitz-Birkenau, as perhaps nowhere else, we are painfully confronted with the nightmare of war and with the memory of the nightmare of war—the war that cost the lives of many millions of people. Yet here in Auschwitz the knowledge and memory of all the horrific crimes are focused as if by a lens. This place is one of the symbols of the tragedy that the world lived through, that Europe lived through, and that the nations that had to grapple with the great challenge of the wave of hatred, the wave of Nazism, lived through.

Auschwitz is one of the most painful symbols of the Holocaust, of the extermination of the Jews, of the extermination of the Roma and Sinti, only because they were Jews, Roma, and Sinti. In the memory of

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Poles, Auschwitz is not only a place where Jews who were citizens of Poland died because they were Jews, but also a place where everyone died, where all of those died who had the courage to stand up to the legal system created during the war under an occupying state.

Tens of thousands of Poles died here, and Russians died as prisoners of war.

Thus Auschwitz, Auschwitz-Birkenau, is a symbol of horrific crimes.

In such a place all of us would surely prefer to remain silent and prefer to pray quietly in our own way, to reflect in silence on everything that is important not only to understanding the crime, to its evaluation, but equally to reflection on where the origins of such horrible deeds may lie. Yet remaining silent

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here is impossible, which is why I wish in a special way to thank those eyewitnesses, the people who survived, who endured the conditions of such terrible crimes, such terrible danger, for the fact that they have had the fortitude for decades on end to speak, to tell their story, to bear witness to the truth, although that memory is surely the most painful thing to them. I therefore wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to all who are witnesses of those awful times, and who have chosen to be here today together with us, together with the President of Germany, together with the President of Poland.

I also wish to thank the young people from Israel, from Germany, from Poland, and from many other countries who choose to meet here

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in Auschwitz. They want to learn about those horrible times, but they also want to seek a path to a better, wiser, and more beautiful world. It is imperative to speak here so that we can remember and know, but above all it is imperative to speak here in order to spur deep reflection within ourselves about whether these same frightful mechanisms of crime are pulsing today with some sort of life concealed within our contemporary world.

This is why Auschwitz plays an exceptionally important role as a museum. I am pleased that we are approaching the moment when we will be able to say that, in the financial sense and in the organizational sense, this place will be permanently secure. It will function permanently not only as a great affront to

Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 26, February 2011

Fot. Paweł Sawicki

that that generation, and also the generation born immediately after the war or shortly afterward faced. President Wulff and I both belong to precisely that generation that grew up in the shadow of the war, in the shadow of crime, in the shadow of that terrible hatred. It is my wish that you never mull over the dilemma that was the lot of my generation

the conscience, not only as the unhealed wound that Władysław Bartoszewski spoke about, but also as a place for thinking togeth-

er about the future of the world and about the future of humanity. My wish for young people is that they never face the questions

as we worked through the reading list at school, as we talked things over in our family homes, of whether the world can still be a good world, or whether there can still be a place for poetry, for music, or a place for creating philosophy after such a horrible crime. Today we know that the answer is yes, that the world is making progress despite that terrible experience. Yet there must be a place, and it is here in Auschwitz, where remembering is a constant imperative, in order to construct a future world built on the truth, terribly painful though it may be, that is essential to knowledge of the world and of ourselves.

I would also like to stress that I am here today with the President of Germany.

This is perhaps the first event of its kind when the presidents of Poland and Germany can be together in such an extraordinary place. I would like to say that this is also a signal of the fact that the world is moving in the right direction, that despite that terrible experience, after many many years, and after many many years of work, we are closer to the point where we can eliminate from contemporary society, from contemporary states, and from the contemporary world all those horrible things that weighed us down, that poisoned at least several generations in our part of Europe with the venom of hatred and with terrible pain. Thank you.

THE ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY CHRISTIAN WULFF

On this very day, sixty-six years ago, the suffering of the survivors of Auschwitz finally came to an end.

The liberators had arrived.

The suffering of the victims of Auschwitz in the preceding years is inconceivable, inexpressible, indescribable. Nevertheless it must be understood, told and described over and over again. After a cynical selection process, hundreds of thousands of human beings were sent directly from the “ramp” to the gas chambers to die a terrible death.

Children were separated from their parents, families were torn apart.

Prisoners, irrespective of their origins, who were not murdered on the spot had to do forced labor under horrible conditions. They suffered from hunger and were exposed to the elements without any protection. They were subjected to inhumane punishments, harassment and pseudomedical experiments, which in fact were nothing but cruel tortures. They were completely at their perpetrators’ mercy.

Auschwitz and other camps were the scenes of the maltreatment and murder of Jews, Sinti and Roma, prisoners of war, resistance fighters, homosexuals, disabled and other individuals.

Even before they arrived at Auschwitz, the Jews of Germany—and later those from German occupied countries—had increasingly been deprived of their rights, had been humiliated and degraded. This process culminated in the systematic persecution of the Jews of Europe, aiming at their destruction.

Auschwitz is situated on Polish soil.

A large number of its victims were Polish nationals. Poland and her citizens suffered immeasurably under German occupation and National Socialist racial fanaticism.

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Unlike anything else, the name “Auschwitz” stands for the crimes perpetrated by Germans against millions of human beings. They fill us Germans with disgust and shame. They lay upon us a historical responsibility that is independent of individual guilt: never again we must allow such crimes to occur.

And we must keep alive the memories. Knowing about the horrors that occurred and about things people were capable of doing to others, are reminding and obliging us, as well as future generations, to preserve the dignity of man under all circumstances and never again to persecute, degrade or kill other human beings just because they adhere to a different faith or are of other ethnic origin, political conviction or sexual orientation.

We Germans have been lucky insofar as the victims and their descendants have expressed their will to reconciliation. We know that this was not easy for them. Therefore we appreciate very much that Jewish life once again is flourishing in Germany, that we have a unique relationship with Israel, and that we are linked in deep friendship with our Polish and other neighbours. This has been an immense gift for us.

It is impossible to imagine the horrors in their entirety. Not before those who suffered are given a name, a face, a home, can we try to understand their fate and really feel what they went through. That is the reason why it is so important that the survivors, in spite of their old age, tell students about their lives, that they tell them what it meant “to stand at the ramp at the age of seventeen.”

I am profoundly grateful to see survivors among us here today, some of whom even accompanied me from Germany. As long as you survivors are bearing witness, there can be no forgetting, and if we will preserve and pass on your testimony,

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there will be no forgetting either.

Everybody who is listening to your stories will be touched for ever. You are both the victims of terror and the bridge toward a better future. For me as the President of the Federal Republic of Germany it is very important to be together with you here in Auschwitz.

The more the number of those who still can testify personally is decreasing, the more the written, photographic and filmed evidence is receiving importance, the more the preservation of the places of memory, especially of Auschwitz, becomes important. Let all of us do everything within our power to contribute to this aim.

Helpful are also memory plaques on houses, reminding of their former occupants, who were deprived of their rights, expelled, and murdered. Or those small brass memory plaques, “stumbling blocks,” set in the pavement before the houses the victims had been living in before expulsion.

Today’s young people must know the truth about the National Socialist terror regime. Then they will raise their voices and resolutely contradict those who are denying or falsifying the facts. They will step

up against those who do not want to understand, who are disparaging the dead and mocking the survivors.

For this reason I invited young people to accompany me to Israel and Yad Vashem last November. For that reason President Komorowski and I went together to the International Youth Meeting Center today to discuss with young people about courage to stand up for one’s beliefs, about a civilization in which one doesn’t look away, in which one intervenes whenever necessary.

We must not forget that, back then, there were people from all nations and from all strata of society who did not look away, but who helped as much as they could, often risking their own lives. Many of those “Righteous among the Nations” are commemorated in Yad Vashem.

Remembrance, commemoration and mourning should not paralyse life, should not bar the way to the future; on the contrary, they should make it possible. Together we bear responsibility to ensure that such a break in civilization never will happen again—not in Europe, neither anywhere on the Globe. For this reason, for the victims’ and for our future’s sake, we must keep the memories alive.

Photo: Paweł Sawicki

President Komorowski, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

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Photo: Paweł Sawicki

Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 26, February 2011

THE ADDRESS BY THE DIRECTOR OF THE AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU MUSEUM DR. PIOTR M.A. CYWIŃSKI We are meeting for the sixty-sixth time in winter.

That is more often than the majority of those present celebrated their birthday anniversaries.

I was born thirty years after the gas chambers of the Holocaust were put into operation.

It is difficult for me to imagine the second, the third ... the fifth ... anniversary.

How different the atmosphere must have been at that time!

When the reverberations of Death could still be felt, when they were loud and omnipresent at this place.

At a time when pain slowly began to change into memory.

There are survivors among us, those who lived through this hell.

From there they brought with them, in their luggage, fear from the perpetrator, frequently also from the fellow prisoner, maybe also anxiety about themselves.

Today their words and testimonies belong to the great voice of history.

There are young people among us.

It will take many years until their word will influence the reality of our world.

Today, however, we can ask ourselves: Are we giving them a chance to understand?

Among all these words, big ones and small ones, ceremonious and everyday words, strange and understandable words,

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I am thanking the survivors who are present. Once again.

I am thanking the Presidents.

I am thanking everybody who came here.

I do not do this in my own name alone.

Though I do not have the least right to thank in the name of somebody else.

Especially in the name of someone who has been silent for more than sixty-six years.

We are meeting exactly on this day and this very place ...

This Day of Liberation has become a Day of Remembrance for mankind, and this place—as pars pro toto—has become a symbol known worldwide.

That means a great commitment for all of us.

There are men and women among us who bear a special responsibility: Politicians, leaders, decision makers.

Their word puts things in order.

They have, however, also the power to destroy this order.

Nowhere else than here, at this place, they clearly see the immense and rarely bearable degree of responsibility that rests on their shoulders.

Here great ideas do not matter, neither nailing one’s colors to the mast, nor power, nor honor.

Here real human beings do matter. Men and women. Everybody.

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They are the strongest commitment for our memory.

We look for their voices in the echoes of our epilogues.

In the language of our memory.

In our conscience.

As usually, I am thanking, and I am asking.

There are men and women among us who were born just after the war, frequently with an inquiring look, in the field of tension between angst and disbelieving.

Nowhere else than here, at this place, we feel a panic desire to flee from verbalization.

From naming. And so also from understanding.

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Did our ears hear the voices of those who are not among us, who never have been among us?

The voices of those who could not experience a single anniversary of the liberation.

The voices of those whose steps at Auschwitz were their last steps.

Let us especially remember that the voices of the majority of the victims of Auschwitz died with their last cry, before any liberation whatsoever.

Now we are here and look at Auschwitz from the perspective of the twenty-first century.

At the core of Europe’s worst experience.

At a point of no return, after which nothing was as it has been.

At the apogee. At the bottom. At today’s most important point of reference.

At our European conscience.

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I would like to remind us of words that were never said on the occasion of our anniversaries.

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Exactly here, at this very place, let me exclaim: We need help with the preservation of the authenticity of Auschwitz!

We need help more than ever before.

There are no more remains of Treblinka, Kulmhof, Sobibór, and Bełżec.

Let us not allow that the biggest of these death camps and the only one that is still recognizable will fall into decay due to the ravages of the time and our indifference.

Let us today side with the remembrance.

With the conscience.

So that future generations, those of our children and their children, can come and stand here and—may the Almighty grant it—understand things better.

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International Youth Meeting Center

Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 26, February 2011

WHAT REMAINS IN MEMORY

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Photo: IYMC

Photo: IYMC

of this we will remember throughout the next century what had happened in Auschwitz,” said the president of Germany, Christian Wulff to the audience of Polish and German former prisoners. Among them were: Kazimierz Albin, Wilhelm Brasse, Hermann Höllenreiner, August Kowal czyk, Oljean Ingster, David Lewin, Józef Paczyński, Zofia Posmysz-Piasecka, Kazimierz Smoleń, Tadeusz Smreczyński, Justin Sonder, and Tadeusz Sobolewicz.

“For me, this day is special because I have the opportunity to meet people who feel compelled to tell the future generations about this,” stressed the German President.

“I belong to the Polish generation that lived and matured in the shadow of the War as well as in the shadow of their own families’ experiences. In fact, my entire childhood in our family home consisted of recollections about the War—in equal measure the memories of the struggle: the partisan actions, the underground, the Warsaw Uprising, as well as recollections of the terrible crimes that, of course, affected Polish families to an extraordinarily high degree. This sense of pain lasted for generations—I think that in my family’s case for three generations,” recalled President Bronisław Komorowski.

“I remember once walking with my father, holding his hand and I was looking at him as if he were a picture, since I was absolutely certain that he was the bravest soldier that had avenged the

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death of his brother several times. And I asked the question, which was typical of my generation, with a deep conviction already knowing what the answer would be. I asked: ‘Dad, and how many Germans did you kill?’ I expected that this would be some great number, because he had been both in the Polish underground and partisan groups of the Vilnius region in a fight that had its end on front line near Dresden. I remember the feeling when my father stood up. Holding me by my hand, he looked at me and said, ‘You know, I hope none.’ This was the moment when I had to reevaluate my attitude toward the War and all that war has brought to my generation.”

Taking part in the discussion were students from schools in Oświęcim, Bieruń, and Bielsko-Biała, as well as German high school students from Kassel and Giessen, and students from the Volkswagen School in Wolfsburg.

Addressing them, President Komorowski stated: “That is why I am glad that the International Youth Meeting Center exists here, in Oświęcim. I am also of the post-War generation, just as President Wulff, but you are even more post-war and you do not even carry such memories, like mine, some inherited from parents, but this does not exempt you from the duty to possess this knowledge. A knowledge that of course can easily be combined with a quite optimistic vision of the world—where these terrible experiences are simultaneously a commitment to a better and more enjoyable life. Sometime after the War, my generation was asked: If after the experiences of the Second World War, after the experience of genocide, after the experience of Auschwitz, was it even possible to create philosophy, write poetry, or to paint cheerful images? I think that we also asked ourselves this question. I hope that my children’s generation will not have such dilemmas.

They know that the world is sometimes malicious and cruel, but you need to build a world that is beautiful, intelligent, and good.”

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Words, important for the IYMC, were uttered by Zofia Posmysz, writer, author of, among others, The Passenger. “What does this Center mean to me? This is a place where—as nowhere else—I do not feel that my life is empty, that I have nothing to say, that I have nothing to do. Here, I am convinced that I have something else to do, something useful. I am among the people who are sensitive, close, and sincere. My personal meetings with the youth offer me hope. Hope that these young people who have come here voluntarily, after coming into contact with the reality ... this creation, which was Auschwitz, will be immune to the various murderous ideologies, which created this kind of monster,” she said.

stand, by getting to know us. The IYMC is not only a Polish-German place, it is a world of young people speaking many languages, and most importantly, those who are hosted here need us, and we need them. And this is why, being 90 years old, I get into a train from Warsaw to Oświęcim and I come to the IYMC, my House that was painted with compassion.”

An important element of the debates were the reflections put forward by young people. “I think that having grown up in the shadow of Auschwitz, some part of it lives within me and is with me everywhere, wherever I go. Every time I hear some stupid antisemitic remark, a red light goes on in my mind and I cannot get over it. Of course, I am well aware of

Speaking about the Center was also August Kowal czyk, who said, “I live along with this town of Oświęcim and I am linked to this soil and to these stones. ‘Im Lager Auschwitz war ich zwar.’ I come here after 66 years, as I did previously after 65, 64, 63 ... to meet ... myself, and that—number 6804. I have started to like it.

I like it not because, after all, this is my Auschwitz, but here in this city on the Soła River is a Center, my Center and for those like me—the International Youth Meeting Center. For me—my house, painted with compassion. A magical place which changes our desires in a friendly din that was once hostile; now young people speaking German come here. They listen to us and feel that it is important for us, very important. And then it turns out that for them, it is equally important. They want to under-

what came out of such remarks,” said 19-year-old Iga Bunalska, a participant in many educational projects organized by the IYMC.

Photo: IYMC

The discussion, which was moderated by the President of the Board of the Foundation for the IYMC, Dr. Ali cja Bartuś, and Christoph Heubner, the Vice-President of the International Auschwitz Committee and one of the co-creators of the Center, was the first point in the commemoration of the 66th anniversary of the liberation of the former Nazi German Concentration and Extermination Camp. Before the debate, the two Presidents met with Polish and German former Auschwitz prisoners in the IYMC library.

“Thank you that you have extended your hand in our direction. We would also like to thank you for your bearing witness, because

Photo: IYMC

Photo: IYMC

uring the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the International Youth Meeting Center played host to the Presidents of Poland, Bronisław Komorowski, and of Germany, Christian Wulff. The two men participated in a debate with former inmates of Auschwitz as well as Polish and German youth, entitled What remains in the memory... The history of Europe, the hope of Europe.

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“Here, I am performing my alternative to military service and would like to stress how important this work is for me. These meetings are of enormous importance to me, in no other place in the world would it be possible to experience what I experience here,” said an IYMC volunteer, Fredi Hahn, from Austria. “After meeting a large number of visitors who come here I noticed, nevertheless, most had come from Germany even though more than 60 years have passed, there is still great interest and what happened, should never be forgotten. I have had many amazing experiences here.”

Joanna Klęczar

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International Youth Meeting Center

Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 26, February 2011

RETURN OF THE PASSENGER A MEETING WITH ZOFIA POSMYSZ

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broadcast by Polish Radio and later the film by Andrzej Munk won acclaim at Cannes, it can be said that The Passenger has truly returned. The meeting with the author was an attempt to take a fresh look at this work within a different historical reality. jk

Photo: IYMC

earful eyes and a standing ovation—this is how Zofia Posmysz was honored by the Oświęcim audience that completely filled the Szymański Hall at the IYMC. The meeting with the writer and former prisoner of Auschwitz, entitled the Return of The Passenger, was held on the 23rd of January. Its organizers were the Judaica Foundation—Center for Jewish Culture in Cracow.

Photo: IYMC

ZOFIA POSMYSZ

The meeting took the form of conversation, in which Leszek Szuster as well as wonderful (as usual) Zofia Posmysz did not only return to memories of the writer, but also shed light on the creation of the radio drama, novel, and film The Passenger as well as the opera by Mieczysław Weinberg that bears the same title. The conversation was accompanied by a presentation of excerpts of the

works.

The premiere of The Passenger—the opera with the libretto by Alexander Medvedev based on the novel by Zofia Posmysz during the opera festival in Bregenz, and then a presentation at the Grand TheatreNational Opera in Warsaw, which with certainty was one of the major musical events of 2010. More than half a century after the drama by Zofia Posmysz was

She is a novelist and screenwriter. In 1942, she was imprisoned in the German Concentration Camp Auschwitz and later sent to Ravensbrück. In 1945, she made her literary debut with her memoirs, Znam katów z Belsen [I Know the Executioners from Belsen].

Among others, she worked at writing for Głos Ludu [Voice of the People] and at Polish Radio. The publicity resulted in a radio play entitled, The Passenger from Cabin Number 45 that formed the basis for An-

drzej Munk’s film The Passenger, and later, the book bearing the same title that was published in 1962. The film’s director was killed in 1961 before the completion of the film, so the movie had to be finished by his colleagues and was released two years later.

Zofia Posmysz is the author of several novels, including Wakacje nad Adriatykiem [Holidays on the Adriatic], short stories, and film scripts.

For many years now she has been closely associ-

ated with the IYMC—it is here that several times a year she meets with groups of young people. In 2008, she was a guest at a meeting in the series European Conversations at the IYMC. The talk during the evening, entitled Literature and Memory revolved around the story of Christ in Auschwitz, whose publication in Polish and German is planned by the IYMC this year in the guise of Tadeusz Palone-Lisowski, the main character of the work.

DISCUSSIONS ABOUT THE MEMORY AND HERITAGE OF AUSCHWITZ

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The goal of the meeting was to agree on the principles of cooperation within the program The Culture of Remembrance—The Identity of Małopolska, which was initiated by the governor of Małopolska, Stanisław Kracik. As the governor stressed, the special importance of this project is to present the plans by Nazi Germany to exterminate the Jewish people, as well as the mass murder of the Polish state’s leadership class; this also includes the presentation of knowledge about the centuries of coexistence between Jews and Poles, together with the

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promotion of human rights in the contemporary world.

The training of teachers, projects for students of Małopolska and opportunities to try to change the curriculum in middle and high schools were also the topics discussed. All the participants agreed on the need for a collaborative effort. In April, as part of the WKOPWiM Cracow Symposium, entitled Teaching history at the historical sites, there will be a presentation about the work of Oświęcim based educational institutions.

The guests of honor of the symposium were Fr. Cardinal Franciszek Macharski

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as well as former prisoners of Auschwitz, who met the same day at a solemn breakfast at IYMC. During this meeting, they proposed their support for the 25th anniversary celebration of the founding of the IYMC that will take place in 2011.

For this purpose, an Honorary Committee was created that includes: Zofia Posmysz, August Kowalczyk, Wilhelm Brasse, Kazimierz Smoleń, Józef Paczyński, Tadeusz Smreczyński, Tadeusz Sobolewicz, as well as Kazimierz Albin.

IYMC

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Photo: IYMC

n January 28, at the International Youth Meeting Center a symposium was held, entitled The Culture of Remembrance—the Heritage of Auschwitz, which was prepared in cooperation with the Institute of Civil Society Pro Publico Bono. It was attended by representatives of the Oświęcim institutions involved in historical education: the Centre for Dialogue and Prayer, Jewish Center, International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust, the State Higher Vocational School, the Association of Roma in Poland, and the IYMC.

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Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum

Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 26, February 2011

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n the site of the former Nazi German Concentration and Extermination Camp of Auschwitz, work continues on the restoration of two former prisoner blocks, numbered 2 and 3. All of these activities have one goal, guided by the principle of minimum intervention, to remove harmful microbes as well as to strengthen the structure of the building, which ultimately will restore the original appearance of the authentic building.

Photo: Adam Pelc

Currently, almost all the work is completed in removing the wooden floors and parts of the wooden ceiling.

Also dismantled were the plaster coated soffit boards, nailed to the underside of the beams. Preliminary conservation work, which involved repairing cracks and fractures, took place on the dismantled floorboards as

well as the disinfection and preservation of the walls and cleaning of the ceramic elements.

After the initial securing of the door woodwork, it was transported to the conservation workshop where further preservation work was carried out. Work also continues on excavating the filled in basements in the two blocks, which is being done together with the shoring up of the foundations.

In Block 2, this work was completed from the ground floor of the stairwell to the basement level. The basement’s ceiling beams and joists have been reinforced.

Work related to the conservation of metal elements such as staircase railings, components of the water

system, and items made of mineral mortars (such as, sewer pipes) are still ongoing. An important component of the conservation work that is being carried out is the continuing photographic and graphic documentation of the buildings’ conservation status.

The project’s implementation is possible through EU co-financing from the European Regional Development Fund under the Operational Program Infrastructure and Environment for the years 2007- 2013.

Monika Bernacka

Conservation work also continues on wooden barracks on the site of the former Auschwitz II-Birk-

Photo: Dział Konserwacji

TO SAVE FROM DESTRUCTION

enau Concentration and Extermination Camp.

The work on barracks B-166 foundation has come to a finish, as have the efforts of protecting fragments of the concrete floor against the winter on the interior of the building. However, in the conservation workshop the process of cleaning elements of the walls, roof, as well as the structural elements continues, and this includes the replacement of missing and damaged sections of the original carpentry work.

In the last quarter of 2010, barracks B-210 has had its lightning protection, skylights, and metal roofing elements as well as tarpaper removed. The entire structure of the barracks was

dismantled and transported to the workshop, where it is being put through the appropriate conservation work. Also carried out was archaeological research that included the analysis of the ground and its condition near the building. The non-original cement was dismantled and work on the removal of the replaced foundation started.

The maintenance project of the five wooden barracks at the former Auschwitz II-Birkenau Concentration Camp is co-financed by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund under the Operational Program Infrastructure and Environment 2007-2013.

Iga Bunalska

LET US BUILD MEMORY. AN EXHIBIT OF DONATIONS GIVEN TO THE AUSCHWITZ MEMORIAL SITE

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n block 12 of Auschwitz I, the Let Us Build Memory exhibit has been organized to show the personal mementos, documents, and art work related to the history of Auschwitz, the Nazi German Concentration and Extermination Camp, that have been donated to the Museum by former prisoners and their families. All of these donated items have been handed over to the Museum in the last three years.

Photo: Paweł Sawicki

Among the items presented are the striped uniforms worn by the prisoners, patches bearing their camp numbers, signet rings created in the camp, camp letters, a sign from a train in which the Jews were deported from Westerbork Concentration Camp in Nazi-occupied Holland, and even rubber toys that were cut out of rubber, made by an unknown prisoner for the

son of prisoner Genowefa Marczewska.

According to the Director of the Museum, Dr. Piotr M.A. Cywiński, this exhibit is very emotional, because many of the donated items are personal mementoes, that families have cherished for decades. In his opinion, it is extremely important that what has been found can be preserved at the Memorial. “This way, the items are then placed in their proper context, they work together with other objects, and above all let us discover and get to know further details, the elements of this tragic story. Secondly, the keepsakes are very safe here, placed under proper care, conservation, and looked after by the specialists in the collections department. They will be kept here for generations,” said Director Cywiński.

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“Each of these authentic artifacts associated with Auschwitz is another story that constitutes testimony of those tragic times. We are grateful for the support we have received so far and we urge you to submit such items to our institution. They serve in spreading knowledge about the history of Auschwitz and commemorate those people whose fate met with one of the most tragic places in history,” the preface to the exhibition says.

In one of the exhibit-cases you can see handmade cards given to the Museum by Helena Datoń-Szpak. Prisoners made these greeting cards as a token of gratitude for her assistance. “During the war, while working as a young girl in the SS canteen she assisted prisoners by smuggling—this included illegal correspondence to the prisoners families. For her, they prepared handwritten and painted greeting cards to celebrate name days, birthdays, or holidays.

One of the histories associated with these cards is very touching, because it is evidence of the feelings that were shared by Helena and one of the prisoners. On one of the cards is, in fact, a personal poem written to Mrs. Datoń-Szpak,” said Elżbieta Brzózka, Head of the Collections Department.

The exhibition Let Us Build Memory will be open until February 24. Most artifacts can also be seen in a special online exhibition on the Mups seum website.

DONATE THE DOCUMENTS OR OTHER HISTORICAL ITEMS IN YOUR POSSESSION TO THE AUSCHWITZ MEMORIAL SITE Memory is not something that is acquired once and remains forever. The moment that the last eyewitnesses and survivors pass away, we have to work together to cultivate what remains: the testimonies of those former prisoners and the authentic artifacts connected with the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Each item has its own enormous meaning and should find its place in the collection of the Memorial Site. Here, it will be preserved, studied, and displayed. Their place is here.

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Jewish Center

Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 26, February 2011

JEWISH MOTIFS—2010 RETROSPECTIVE

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Divorce Jewish Style, directed by John Edginton (Great Britain 2009, 48 minutes).

Under Jewish Law, it is the husband who has the right to decide whether he will grant his wife a divorce (the “Get”). If he refuses to do this, the wife could be condemned to years of living within a dead marriage. She cannot remarry and any child she bears from a new relationship is considered illegitimate.

In this controversial documentary, the “chained wives” from the Orthodox Jewish community in Israel and the UK discuss their plight—this includes a woman who has been refused a “Get” by her husband for 47 years.

The Peretzniks, directed by Sławomir Grünberg (Poland/ USA 2009, 93 minutes).

The film presents the story about the students of I. L. Peretz Jewish School, which existed in Łódź until 1969. After its closing, the majority of its graduates were forced to leave Poland as a result of the antisemitic campaign of March 1968. The film tells the story of the unique relationship between Peretzniks, which they cultivated in the post-War Łódź, and the fact that it became even stronger due to the fact that history tried to destroy it. The film is based on the brainchild of Gołda Tencer.

Dana, directed by Amir Fishman (Israel 2009, 15 minutes).

This film represents the turning point in the relationship between a single young mother and her adolescent daughter when a big secret is discovered.

Worried and afraid her daughter is repeating her own mistakes, the mother does not want to fail as a parent, while her daughter wants to prove that she is independent.

Miracle Lady, directed

by Moran Somer and Michal Abulafia (Israel 2009, 10 minutes).

Winner of the Warsaw Bronze Phoenix Award 2010

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Fortuna, a 75-year-old woman, sits, wearing her wedding gown and waits for her late husband to return back home. Meanwhile, her next-door neighbor’s elderly servant—Marcela-Merkada— wishes for her miserable life to end. Their two stories intersect and change each of these women’s fates.

who organized and perpetrated the mass murder of the Jews, Gypsies, and Soviet prisoners? Where did they come from? What motivated them to do this?

March 21, 5:00 pm Einsatzgruppen—the death brigades, part 2, directed by Michaël Prazan (France 2009, 90 minutes).

Winner of the Warsaw Silver Phoenix Award 2010

March 14, 5:00 pm Leaving the Fold, directed

by Eric R. Scott (Canada 2008, 52 minutes). Winner of the Warsaw Bronze Phoenix Award 2010 Leaving the Fold is a film about young individuals who were born and raised within the ultra-Orthodox Jewish world, who no longer wish to remain locked inside this realm.

The stories of conflict, coercion, and struggle come from the Hasidic enclaves of Montreal, Brooklyn, and Jerusalem.

Deadly Honour, directed by Lipika Pelham (Israel/Great Britian 2009, 58 minutes).

Deadly Honour documents multiple murders of young women in the Israeli city of Ramla. The narrator is a 15-year-old girl, Salma, who tell the story—based on true events—of a girl who is a survivor of an honor killing. The film presents the fear and trauma of those who survived. Also, the film looks into the social fabric of the mixed JewishArab city, where women have better integrated into mainstream Israeli society than men.

Gefilte Fish, directed

by Shelly Kling (Israel 2008, 10 minutes).

Gali’s family has a longstanging tradition where every woman who is engaged to be married must prepare Gefilte Fish for the wedding party, as a guarantee of the marriage’s success. Gali’s mother and grandmother have given her a live carp that has to be cooked. She is torn between the compassion she feels toward the fish and the need to abide to her family’s tradition.

Einsatzgruppen: the death brigades, part 2, directed by Michaël Prazan (France 2009, 90 minutes).

Winner of the Warsaw Silver Phoenix Award 2010 In June 1941, the German army invades the Soviet Union. Behind it are the Einsatzgruppen, in other words: death brigades, who have been sent to fulfill the duty of exterminating Jews and the enemies of the Reich. Within a few months, the genocide work is accomplished. In December of 1941, the Baltic countries are declared “Judenfrei”—free of Jews…

Who were the individuals

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tures. The story is based around their earliest memories and those events.

Outcasts. Jewish Partisans of Belarus, directed

by Alexander Stupnikov (Belarus 2009, 53 minutes).

Warsaw Phoenix—The Special Beit Award 2010 Outcasts is the first film about Jewish partisan units in Belarus. Just in the Minsk area, there were seven Jewish fighting units. The film shows the conditions in which the Jewish partisan organizations formed as well as their relationship with Belarusians.

Guided Tour, directed by Benjamin Freidenberg (Israel 2009, 25 minutes).

Winner of the Warsaw Silver Phoenix Award 2010 Thirty-one-year-old Eitan lives alone in Jerusalem and works at nights painting lines on the city’s streets.

The down-to-earth and monotonic work is interwoven with reminiscences from the protagonist’s everyday life.

Polski Hotel, director Kama Veymont (Poland 2009, 49 minutes).

This film uncovers the

I Seek You at Dawn, directed by Eliav Berman (Israel 2008, 15 minutes).

Thirty-eight-year-old Eliav Berman studied and received a master’s degree in Clinical Rehabilitation Psychology at Bar Ilan University. After working for a few years in the field of rehabilitation research, he began to take interest in photography and film. He is now finishing his master’s degree in film at the Tel Aviv University.

March 28, 5:00 pm 8 Stories that didn’t Change the World, directed by Ivo Krankowski (Poland 2010, 35 minutes).

Viewer’s Choice Award 2010 and the Warsaw Phoenix 2010—Special Prize of the Jewish Community in Warsaw The film highlights eight individuals—Polish Jews born between 1914 and 1933. It brings us into the realm of their youth, childhood dreams, and adven-

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Photo: Festival Jewish Motifs

March 7, 5:00 pm

Photo: Festival Jewish Motifs

he Oświęcim Jewish Center in association with the Jewish Motifs Association invite you to a viewing of films on the subject of Jewish themes. Every Monday, from March 7 to 28, the Center will be screening films, organized thanks to the generosity of the International Film Festival Jewish Motifs conducted by the Jewish Motifs Association. The movies have subtitles in English and Polish. We cordially invite everyone.

background of the mysterious and virtually unknown story from the time of the Holocaust that took place in Warsaw during the summer of 1943, and which—because of its moral ambiguity—was called “the Polski Hotel scandal.”

The monthly magazine Oś is a

media sponsor of this event.

Center for Dialogue and Prayer Foundation

Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 26, February 2011

NOTHING CAN BE A SUBSTITUTE FOR A REAL MEETING

“I

Photo: Jakob Weber

am very concerned with the matter in which we will remember the Holocaust in 10, 20, or 30 years,” said Tal Goshen, a guide at the House of the Ghetto Heroes, a Holocaust museum in Israel, who took part in the international meeting, entitled Memory and Commemoration in the Era of Web 2.0. “The challenge of our generation is shaping the memory of the Holocaust. Soon there will be no one who will be able to tell us what had happened at that time,” she added.

Anat Shavit

Kołodziej in Harmęże. Everyone also took part in the commemoration of the 66th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

“It is most important for us that there are meetings between young people and survivors, who are after all, witnesses of that history,” said Wolfgang Gerstner, director of the Maximilian Kolbe Werk. “We organized a similar seminar a year ago and all the participants

on this topic is a bit strange with someone who is not Jewish, despite the fact that the Holocaust meant suffering for all.” Isabel Ruegenberg from Germany’s Frankfurt learned about the project from her uncle.

Isaiah was the first person that she met, and who eats kosher food. “Meetings with different cultures are something very interesting.

However, a visit to Auschwitz is something more than a shock and sadness,” she said.

According to one of the organizers of the project, Julia Maria Koszewska, meeting people from different cultures can also bring about some difficulties: “The seminar is conducted in four languages: Polish, German, Russian, and English. The

Yes, I am Polish. But today I feel more like a world citizen brought up within the Slavic culture. My family history is also not very complicated: one set of grandparents were deported from Belarus to Lower Silesia—hence my upbringing, which I would refer to as “eastern.” What do I do? I graduated, two degrees, and currently I travel and get to know new people different nationalities, religions, places of birth, and residence. My interests are centered around the wider view of the East as well as Jewish culture—for these two reasons I came to Oświęcim for a seminar on Memory and Commemoration in the Era of Web 2.0.

For me, Oświęcim is a town in Małopolska, 60 km away from Cracow, that has 40 thousand inhabitants.

It might seem that there is nothing special about it, but I decided to take five days off and come to visit it. I came to meet with youth from different countries and to talk to them about history. The most important thing for me was to learn experience from their first visit to Poland, to Oświęcim, and the Auschwitz Memorial Site.

Katarzyna Gasińska

Photo: Maximilian Kolbe Werk

This project was coordinated by the German organization Maximilian Kolbe Werk in Oświęcim and lasted from January 23 to 27.

This meeting was attended by 25 young participants, aged from 18 to 28, from eight different countries, as well as 10 Holocaust survivors. The program included a visit to the Auschwitz Memorial Site, a meeting with survivors, and visiting the exhibition by Marian

were very impressed. So this year a second edition of the project is taking place, but this time it is longer.

The first part takes place in Oświęcim, and in March the participants will go to Buchenwald,” he added. While talking about what caused his organization to undertake such a task, I noticed his eyes gleaming: “We have two challenges. First, we must use this moment, while the witnesses are still with us. A person meeting a person gives you more than watching a film or reading a book. Secondly, we want to bring young people closer to this very important subject. That is why we have chosen this and not some other motto,” he said.

Isaiah Urken learned about the seminar from a friend belonging to the Jewish Community in Vilnius, who insisted on taking part in the event. “ It is very interesting and somewhat connected with my national identity,” she said. “Previously I did not think that Germany was interested in the Holocaust and that they are only doing so much for the sake of remembrance. A discussion

Participants of the project

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Center for Dialogue and Prayer Foundation

Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 26, February 2011

simplest solution would be to use English, but because we want to convey the message of reconciliation, we decided to emphasize the linguistic diversity.

Our main goal is to use a meeting with the past for the present and future. We want to create a communi-

cative memory—a memory that comes out of a meeting with others and from the place where it occurred.

This is why we have chosen Auschwitz-Birkenau. For most of the young participants it was the first visit to the Memorial Site.”

In today’s world, memory

seems to be shorter and more ephemeral. The world is changing at a dizzying pace and what happened two years ago is often today only the distant past. You could say that within the family, memory is passed on by the generation of our grandparents. That, which

happened in the past is usually blurred in our memory.

Will we be able to save the memory of the Holocaust, when there will no longer be grandparents who had seen the Holocaust with their own eyes? “The key here is the meeting,” said Tal. “We have to constantly

meet and talk. Today, we can be helped by technology, because memory can also be safeguarded in the virtual world. However, nothing can be a substitute for real meetings,” she adds after a moment.

Anat Shavit i

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE HUMAN? Jakob Weber: Macedonia is located quite far from Oświęcim. What was your trip like?

Mustafa Yakupov: The problem of traveling from Macedonia lies in the fact that there are not any good airline connections. Our capital, Skopje, has no connections with major European cities; therefore, it was quite a journey for me. From my home in Kratovo, in the northeast of the country, I went by taxi to the airport in Skopje. I flew to Zagreb, then to Munich, and Cracow.

Whole affair took about 10 hours.

Tell us something about Macedonia. I think few people, including me, know very much about your country.

Macedonia is a small country in the southeast Balkans. It is a part of the former Yugoslavia, which gained independence in 1991. About 2 million people live there. It is a multicultural country because very different groups live next door to one another: Macedonians, Albanians, Roma, Serbs, Turks, Bosnians, and people from Romania as well as Hungary. There are many minorities for such as a small country.

The trip to Oświęcim had to be very important to you if you decided on such a long and stressful journey.

It was indeed very important. I am here for personal reasons. My grandfather told me stories about how the German Nazis occupied our city. He remembered that as a child he had to stand against a wall with other Roma, whom the Germans wanted to shoot. At almost the last second a doctor saved him, a German woman who had a Macedonian husband. Germany claimed that the Roma were fighting the Germans, that they were active partisans. The doctor said that these were not partisans, but very poor people. My grandfather had to leave Kratovo and live high in the mountains. Anyway, my great-grandfather was arrested and detained in a slave labor camp in Bulgaria. Fortunately, he managed to escape later.

What images did you associate with Auschwitz before coming here?

The main associations were connected with death and fire. Much violence. This was a very violent image with scenes of death, fire... Like in Hell.

Now, after having visited the camp, has anything changed?

It was indeed a place full of violence, but I was surprised to what level the process of killing was mechanized killing, that mur-

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der was everyday work, it was all so systematic: gas chambers, crematoria, burning bodies, as well as shootings at the Wall of Death. Previously, I thought people had been killed in Auschwitz “normally,” but a system was created here for inflicting suffering. I also remember a quote from the exhibition at the Museum. Hitler said that the conscience is a Jewish invention.

Thus, these people had no conscience.

These words made me wonder about what it means to be human today. We are all human beings, even those who kill. But this raises the question of what it means to be human. I am here and I am a Macedonian, but I am also a Gypsy, a citizen of my country. I have the same rights as others. Many people do not understand this. They say, “You’re a Gypsy.” My answer is, “What is the difference between me, as a Gypsy, and you, as a Macedonian?” We have the same passport. There is no difference.

I know that you are involved in working with young people. What will you tell them after you return home?

First, I will pass on to them the stories of the witnesses whom I met, but then I’ll try to teach them to pass on positive Roma values to society, to stop discrimination. We must make people aware that Roma are not some sort of “hoodlums,” that we are the same as other people. Such is the task of the Regional Association of Roma Youth Education. We want young people to actively participate, using creative methods, and promote their values in society, we want to mobilize them and give them energy.

Are you afraid that what happened in Auschwitz could happen again? Are Roma in Macedonia being discriminated against?

I am here both because of the Roma’s history, and also because of the fact that discrimination against Roma did not end after the Second World War. After the War, Bulgaria introduced a law against using the Roma language, Slovakia sterilized Romani women, in Hungary many Roma were killed and their houses were burned. Roma children had to go to special schools where they could not properly get educated. The discrimination continues. Luckily, today there are a number of activists who are fighting to improve the life of the Roma, they are fighting for their inclusion in society, and fighting for their full citizenship.

And how does the situation look in Macedonia? Do you have to fight for these things all the time?

Macedonia is very interesting, as the Roma

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Photo: Jakob Weber

AN INTERVIEW WITH MUSTAFA YAKUPOV, A PROJECT PARTICIPANT FROM MACEDONIA.

generally do not suffer because of this. The main problems are health care and the lack of housing. In education, the Roma are doing very well—they are attending universities, cultivating themselves. We even have a special ministry, so that at the political level, our voice is also heard. However, this is not enough to solve all the problems connected to the Roma’s health or employment. Education is not the only solution.

Everything comes full circle: the Roma are poor. Why are they poor? Because they have no education! Why are they unemployed? Because they are uneducated. And because of the fact that they have no education, they cannot find a good job, and they live in poverty. In Macedonia, and several other countries a special program is taking place—the Roma Decade, from 2005 to 2015. However, I do not know what will happen after 2015. I am curious about the results because we have many problems that remain unsolved.

Do you see any difference between my and your visit to this place? You come from the world, which suffered because of Nazi Germany. I am from Germany, a country that bears responsibility for all these awful things.

I think that there is no difference. No need to blame yourself and you should not blame others. Even today there are people who kill others. We must be aware of that and contemplate the question of why people are, in any way, able to do something like this to others.

Interview by: Jakob Weber

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History

Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 26, February 2011

FROM GANOBIS’S CABINET

ANNA SZALBÓT (1906-1942)

uch a parasol was desired by every elegant lady of years gone by. Buying one was no easy matter. Today, it is simply impossible, because the parasol has become a historical artifact.

selfless supporter and faithful promoter of the movement.

She was also a member of the Circle of Polish Women, and sympathized with the peasant movement.

In 1941, the family of Paweł Bobek, a well known peasant activist in Cieszyn Silesia, put her in touch with Wojciech Jekiełek of Osiek, near Oświęcim. Jekiełek was one of the underground leaders in the Land of Oświęcim and the commander of the Peasant Battalions (BCh) in the Biała Region. Anna Szalbót took her vows and became a member of the BCh in June 1941, under the pseudonym “Rachela.” She joined the relief effort being carried out in the vicinity of Auschwitz by Jekiełek’s group, and became one of the mainstays of the campaign. Enjoying great trust among Lutheran circles in Cieszyn Silesia, she organized drives there to collect food, medicine, and clothing for the prisoners. She also encouraged the womenfolk to knit socks, gloves, and other items to help keep the prisoners warm. She personally went around collecting for donations used to buy clothing and medicine. She used her old contacts in the health service to obtain medicine and surgical instruments for the prisoners from local hospitals and pharmacies.

When an epidemic of scabies was raging in Auschwitz during the summer of 1941, she used all means possible to obtain effective remedies in the form of Mitigal cream and the

S

preparation known as “Peruvian balsam.” On more than one occasion, she would sneak up to the camp and dropped off food and medicine for the prisoners. A uniqueand characteristic way in which she helped was administering injections to prisoners laboring outside the camp. Her activity could hardly fail to attract the attentions of the Gestapo. In danger of being arrested, “Rachel” went into hiding out in Sosnowiec, and later in Oświęcim and Osiek, from where she was finally sent to Warsaw. There, as “Helena Wodecka,” she served as a courier for the Peasant Battalions national headquarters.

At the end of 1942, she arrived in the area near the camp with a large quantity of medicine she had obtained for the prisoners in Warsaw and smuggled across the border from the General Government. She sat up with Wojciech Jekiełek on the night of December 29/30, preparing food parcels for the camp. Several hours later, at dawn, a German gendarmerie patrol caught them by surprise.

When the Germans ordered them to halt, “Rachela” tried to run away, and one of the gendarmes shot her dead (Jekiełek was captured, but managed to escape). The Germans took Anna Szalbót’s remains inside the Auschwitz camp and burned them in the crematorium. After the war, she was posthumously awarded the Cross of Grunwald Third Class and the Oświęcim Cross.

Mirosław Obstarczyk

Photo: Mirosław Ganobis

Born into a large, poor peasant family in Wisła Malinka, Cieszyn Silesia, on June 18, 1906, she lost her father when she was six. Her mother remarried. Her stepfather was killed in the First World War in 1914, and her mother died afterwards. Anna’s grandparents in Nydek, Zaolzie, raised her, and she attended the village school there. Her grandparents died soon afterwards, and she moved to Wisła as a manual laborer on a large farm. She dreamed of a profession where she could help others, so she attended and graduated from nursing school at the Lutheran charity home in Dzięgielów, Cieszyn Silesia, and joined a Lutheran women’s congregation, becoming a deaconess.

She worked for a time at the Country Hospital in Cieszyn, and then, until 1938, at the Mother and Child Station in Golasowice. Until the outbreak of the war, she worked as a visiting nurse in her hometown of Wisła. She was also active in volunteer circles. She had first come into contact with the scout movement while living with her grandparents in Zaolzie, and she became a

PEOPLE OF GOOD WILL

Parasol

Apolonia Bukietyńska (Pomietlarz) was born in Oświęcim and went to school here. She graduated from the Stanisław Konarski High School. As an outstanding singer, she was a prima donna at the Silesian Opera in Bytom. Often she performed concerts in philharmonic halls and on Polish Radio. She performed

VESTIGES OF HISTORY FROM THE COLLECTIONS OF THE AUSCHWITZ MUSEUM

in many countries around the world. It is certainly one of the most famous people from the Oświęcim area.

I know that while traveling the world, she proudly highlighted where she came from. The parasol, which I have in my collection, is a wonderful memento of this wonderful woman.

Mirosław Ganobis

T

The rosary shown on the photograph was made in Auschwitz by prisoner Franciszka Studzińska, who managed to carry it out of the camp and preserve it. In 1997, it made its way into the Museum’s collection.

Other items were also made out of bread. A former Auschwitz prisoner writes: “I do not remember the name of that prisoner, who created the chess pieces that were at least 10 centimeters tall. He also made a figure of Tadeusz Kościuszko on a horse.

These were very attractive

figures and they were made of bread. It is a shame that they have not survived to this day.”

At other concentration camps, prisons, and ghettos, we can also find items made out of bread. Tadeusz Radwan, who spent almost two years in the Tarnów prison, through enormous sacrifices of bread made the various figures, portraits, and even scenes from the prison. He worked with his fingers, also using needles and a knife made out of a spoon. In a few of the figures there were hid-

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den compartments, in which secret messages could be passed from cell to cell.

The rosary made of bread from Auschwitz is full of symbolism and meaning, which is difficult to discuss in this place. Perhaps, it will make us reflect: “…nevertheless, they worked on one thread, making a necklace, or a rosary. Beads—each one distinct—but similar to each other.” (Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz).

Agnieszka Sieradzka Collections Department, A-BSM

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Photo: Paweł Sawicki

he rosary made of bread is an expression of faith by people who were locked behind the barbed wire of the camp. The very material that it was made of is evidence of its value for the prisoners.

Dr. Aleksander Giermański recalled: “I remember the items made out of bread (rosaries, crosses), which were left behind by the prisoners who were locked in the bunkers.” Kneaded balls of bread were strung onto a thread and in the last hours of their life, prisoners prayed using them.

Rosary

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Photographer

Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 26, February 2011

Photo: Jakob Weber

Photo: Jakob Weber

Photo: Sebastian Schröder-Esch

Photo: Isaiah Urken

Photo: Jakob Weber

Project organized by German Maximilian Kolbe Werk had title: Memory and Commemoration in the Era of Web 2.0. From 23 to 27 January, young people from eight countries, in the company of Holocaust survivors, were learning journalism, recognizing in the same time the history of Auschwitz. The second part of the project will be held in March in Weimar and Buchenwald.

Details can be found at Maximilian-Kolbe-werk.blogspot. com.

Photo: Sebastian Schröder-Esch

PHOTO JOURNAL

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