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10-episodes Podcast Cycle: "Auschwitz. A Monograph on the Human"
The book ‘Auschwitz. A Monograph on the Human’ by the Auschwitz Museum Director Dr Piotr M. A. Cywiński is the first attempt on such a scale anywhere in the world to explore in such depth the human emotions experienced within the camp. Ten chapters from the book are now being released as a podcast series.
Collecting the material and working on the publication took almost six years. Piotr Cywiński analyzed more than 250 memoirs by Survivors of the German Nazi Auschwitz camp, as well as an extensive body of previously unpublished archival testimonies. On this basis, he offered a profound reflection on the human condition under the process of concentration-camp dehumanization.
The publication is divided into more than thirty chapters, each devoted to a separate subject. Ten of them are presented in the podcast series:
Loneliness: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts
Death: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts
Inner Life: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts
Emotions and Numbness: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts
Friendship: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts
Births: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts
Laugh and Joy: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts
Fear: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts
Suicide: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts
Hope: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts
The Polish-language version of the podcast series was created as a direct result of the distinction received by the Auschwitz Museum at the end of 2024 in the Janusz Majka Podcast of the Year competition. The award from the production company PLAC360 was presented to the ‘On Auschwitz’ podcast. As the jury wrote at the time, “this is a podcast that popularizes history and contributes to the objective shaping of contemporary memory without excessive historical politics. PLAC360 recognizes its creators for bringing history into the present in a calm, factual and effective way.”
“The prize was the production of ten podcast episodes in a professional studio. We decided that this offered an opportunity to create a single coherent series. Because of its form, ‘Auschwitz. A Monograph on the Human’ was excellent material for the audio adaptation,” said Agnieszka Juskowiak-Sawicka, Head of E-learning at the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust.
Each chapter of the book is, in a sense, an autonomous analysis of a single selected issue, often one particular emotion. At their core are quotes selected from the testimonies and memoirs of almost 450 Auschwitz Survivors, woven together through the author’s analysis.
“The polyphonic nature of this narrative made it particularly well suited to an audio adaptation. We wanted each excerpt from a Survivor’s testimony to retain an individual character. We concluded that these voices could be provided by the caretakers of the Memorial, Museum employees and guides,” said Andrzej Kacorzyk, Director of the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust.
“As many as 132 people took part in the entire project. This allowed us to strengthen the distinctive polyphonic effect that is such an important part of the publication’s impact,” emphasized Agnieszka Juskowiak-Sawicka.
All of the recorded excerpts were sent to PLAC360, which was responsible for editing the complete series. “This was one of those projects in which editing was not simply a matter of putting recordings together. We received more than a thousand excerpts featuring the voices of 132 people, and we had to build them into a coherent narrative while preserving their individuality,” said Marcin Łukasik, founder of PLAC360.
“With a subject like this, precision, respect for the material, and responsibility for the way it would be received by listeners were particularly important to us. At PLAC360, we also want to use our expertise in projects that have genuine social significance,” Łukasik emphasized.
In addition, with the support from English-speaking narrators and volunteers involved in producing the „On Auschwitz” podcast, the Museum independently produced an English-language version of the series.
All episodes of the On Auschwitz podcast are also available through the Museum’s English-language podcast page, as well as on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and the Museum’s YouTube channel.
“I hope that my attempt to restore this perspective, one that Survivors spoke about but that we have not been able to perceive sufficiently, will fulfil my obligation towards their words, memories and warnings. Towards them themselves. I also hope that it will serve as a proposal for a new approach in the historiography of concentration camps and extermination centers, and perhaps also in other studies of genocide, so that human experience, examined through the polyphony of voices preserved in memory, may come more fully to the center of researchers’ attention. We owe this not to them, but to ourselves. And to future generations. This experience was too important, too painful and too deadly to be confined to numbers, dates and facts. There are more important, far more important questions that require analysis beyond these strictly factual findings,” Piotr Cywiński wrote.
The English edition of Auschwitz. A Monograph on the Human by Dr Piotr M. A. Cywiński is available from the Auschwitz Museum’s English-language online bookstore, as well as at the Memorial.
