News
New exhibition about Polish citizens will be created in Auschwitz
A new exhibition in block 15 at the Auschwitz I site will present the fate of more than 450,000 Polish citizens—Poles and Polish Jews—deported to the Auschwitz Nazi German concentration camp and extermination center.
The exhibition will focus on the story of the Polish victims of the camp and recount its history from the local perspective of the Oświęcim area, including aid to prisoners by local residents. The author of the scenario is Mirosław Obstarczyk, a historian and highly experienced custodian in the Exhibition Department at the Museum.
The exhibition will consist of two parts:
- The ground floor of block 15 will be dedicated to the fate of Poles and Polish Jews sent to the camp by the Germans. “Auschwitz is the largest Polish cemetery,” said Obstarczyk. “As part of their repressive occupation policy, the Nazis deported about 450,000 Polish citizens here—about 300,000 Polish Jews and about 150,000 Poles.”
- Upstairs, there will be a new exhibition presenting the history of the Auschwitz camp from the immediate local perspective. Among other things, it will tell about the resettlement of civilians that accompanied the building and expansion of the whole Auschwitz complex, repression measures against the local population, and the activities of the local resistance movement. It will also take account of the German plans for rebuilding the city, the existence of a complex of labor camps in the suburbs, and the presence of German civilians in the areas around Auschwitz—especially the specialists overseeing the construction, relying primarily on Auschwitz prisoner labor, of the IG Farben synthetic rubber and liquid fuel plants.
Another theme of the exhibition will be aid to prisoners by local residents. “This took highly varied forms, from the illegal supply of food and medicine, through delivering correspondence, all the way up to organizing escapes,” says Obstarczyk. “The Museum has already published People of Good Will, edited by Dr. Henryk Świebocki, which contains biographical sketches of over 1,200 people who took part in the aid effort. This is only a subset of a far larger group of people who risked their lives in the effort to alleviate the suffering of the prisoners.” The exhibition will also provide basic information on the way World War II unfolded in Poland, and the specific nature of the occupation regime in the country.
The project is part of larger changes now underway in the exhibition at the Auschwitz Memorial. The scenario for the new main exhibition is in development. A big international competition for the accompanying visual concept should begin this year. Work is continuing on a new introductory exhibit and an exhibition of camp art.
“The so-called national exhibitions at the Memorial have been replaced successively over the last few years,” says Obstarczyk. “The Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem is handling the replacement of the Jewish exhibition, and part of the new Russian exhibition opened on January 27. Work is also continuing on several other exhibitions, and the Polish exhibition is now one of the oldest ones left. It is essential to replace it, especially since hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world visit the Memorial. I hope that visitors will be able to see the new exhibition within three years.”
The new exhibition is a replacement for The Struggle and Martyrology of the Polish Nation in the Years 1939-1945, which was opened 25 years ago in block 15 at the Auschwitz I site.
The Germans sent approximately 450,000 Poles and Polish Jews to Auschwitz from 1940 to 1945.
About 150,000 Poles were sent to Auschwitz as part of the repressive German occupation policy in the country. Aside from those who violated or were suspected of violating the occupation regulations or who joined the resistance movement, those confined to the camp also included people who belonged to the prewar leadership stratum thanks to their education, work, or public position. They included government officials, politicians, teachers, doctors, military officers, and clergy. It is estimated that at least half of them died as a result of starvation, beatings, inhuman conditions, sickness, hard labor, or executions. From the beginning, all transports included people from national and ethnic minorities, and especially Jews, who made up about ten percent of the prewar population.
About 300,000 Polish Jews were deported to Auschwitz within the framework of the so-called “Final Solution of the Jewish Question,” or the destruction of the European Jews. Mass transports began in May 1942, when approximately 35,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz from the southwest part of prewar Poland. Later, between November 1942 and February 1943, transports began arriving from the northeastern regions. About 30,000 Jews from the ghettos in Sosnowiec and Będzin were deported in August 1943, and 60,000 to 70,000 Jews from the Łódź ghetto arrived in Auschwitz in August 1944. The majority of them were murdered in the gas chambers immediately after arrival.
