Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Auschwitz stands testament to horror, for now

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published January 27, 2007

OSWIECIM, Poland - As they do on every anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops, witnesses to the Holocaust will gather today - growing older, frailer and fewer each year.

After 62 years, the camp itself is also showing signs of aging under the pressures of tourism and time.

Its new director is searching for ways to preserve vital evidence of Nazi crimes and update the exhibits without chipping away at Auschwitz's authenticity - or giving fodder for Holocaust deniers.

"This wasn't built as a medieval castle with strong materials to last for all time," said Piotr Cywinski, a 34-year-old historian who took over in September. "It was a Nazi camp built to last a short time."

The Nazis themselves blew up the gas chambers and crematoria toward the end of World War II as the Soviet army approached. Today, they are evidence of both the original crimes and the German attempt to cover them up.

Any decay poses a problem given the camp's role as evidence of the atrocities. The site provides a clear picture of how the camp operated - while many other former Nazi death camps were dismantled and are marked today only by monuments.

Cywinski is calling for retainer walls to be built around gas chambers to prevent them from sinking further.

But any tampering with the gas chambers is problematic because Holocaust deniers could seize on that - and photographs of repair work - to try to argue the whole thing was fabricated, according to Jonathan Webber, a professor of Jewish studies at the University of Birmingham and a member of the International Auschwitz Council, a board that advises Auschwitz administrators.

Another mission Cywinski has set for himself is modernizing the exhibit that was first set up in 1955. Included in the exhibit housed in the original brick barracks are photographs of inmates, SS offices left in their original state down to the picture of Adolf Hitler on the wall, and twisted eyeglasses and hair taken from victims before they were killed.

Cywinski stressed that he is only starting to decide how to modernize it and that all decisions would be made after consulting with authorities on Holocaust commemoration.

The exhibit "was at the time created for people who remembered the war very well," Cywinski said. "Now we have a generation of young people whose parents don't even remember the war. ... If we don't change it, this exhibition will say always less to the next generations."

Fast Facts:

U.N. adopts resolution

The U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution Friday condemning the denial of the Holocaust, with only Iran rejecting it. The resolution, introduced by the United States and approved by consensus, "condemns without any reservation any denial of the Holocaust." It did not single out any country, but Israel and the United States both suggested that Iran should take note, especially after it provoked widespread anger last month by holding a conference casting doubt on the Nazi genocide of Jews.

[Last modified January 27, 2007, 00:39:06]