News
New Main Exhibition Planned for the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum and Memorial
Oświęcim, January 30 (PAP – Polish Press Agency) – Preliminary proposals for a thorough transformation of the main exhibition at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum will be presented and discussed at the next session of the International Auschwitz Council, in early July, Museum Director Piotr M.A. Cywiński told PAP on Tuesday.
“We will have more to say afterwards, with varying degrees of specificity, on some aspects,” Cywiński explained. He also indicated that the changes to the main exhibition are not a case where time is of the essence, or where haste is called for.
Tomasz Merta, Polish deputy minister for culture and national heritage, feels that the fact that “the exhibition will be new does not indicate any effort to modify the substance of the landmark site. There have been reports about attempting to ‘beautify’ the camp or reconstruct it,” he said. “This is not even being taken into account. It never was. A monument is a monument. We are in this unique place where we have material evidence of what happened, and we are going to protect it. The new exhibition has nothing to do with any modification of the landmark.”
Merta was alluding to an article in Haaretz last November. The Jerusalem newspaper wrote at the time that “detailed plans have not yet been drawn up, but persons who attended a recent meeting of Holocaust survivors cautioned against any attempt to ‘beautify’ the camp, as has been done at other Nazi Concentration Camp sites.” Haaretz quoted one of the survivors as saying that “Dachau and Sachsenhausen have been transformed by now into well tended gardens. We will not let the same thing be done to Auschwitz.”
Merta stressed that the new Auschwitz exhibition “must be authentic and modern, and those words are not contradictory.” The new exhibition, he said, “must be developed with a very high level of acceptance, discussion, and understanding from all the different publics that are interested in its authenticity. . . . Everyone must feel that the exhibition is evolving in the proper direction.”
Both Merta and Cywiński stressed that all proposals have been and will continue to be examined in consultation with various circles, including former prisoners and the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem. “I held lengthy discussions at the Holocaust Museum in Washington and discussions with educators who bring young people here, and with the guides, who have a great many insights,” said Cywiński.
The head of the Auschwitz Museum also pointed out, in the context of changes to the exhibition, that the Auschwitz site is a very difficult place for this kind of work. “It is far easier to mount an exhibition on this theme anywhere else,” he said. “Here, we are at the heart of the subject, within the authentic walls.”
Cywiński feels that the current trends in exhibitions are caught up in a race for shock value, and that there is an obsession with multimedia displays. “People walk through them and see something new at each step. They are bombarded by impressions. I think that this is a place where it will be necessary to find some alternative to these fashions. This is a place where the exhibition should not be excessively exciting. It cannot be allowed to drown out the message of the place itself.”
Cywiński said that, whatever the results of the international discussion over the setting up of a new exhibition, it will be necessary, first of all, to carry out the thorough conservation of the camp blocks.
“A million visitors per year have left a mark on the architecture of the buildings. They were not built to last this long and to deal with this volume of ‘visitor traffic.’ We should remember that prisoners added upper stories to many of the blocks using material from demolished houses. Therefore, the one thing I can say for sure is that the new exhibition will not occupy the upstairs floors. The second stories of the blocks will have to be withdrawn from exhibition use and devoted to something different. This will mean that the exhibition will be spread through a greater number of blocks. And this in turn necessitates very thorough preservation work. Preliminary work is already underway on the design. I hope that we can move on to this stage as soon as possible. It is completely essential.”
The present main exhibition opened in 1955. It can be seen, with minor modifications, in blocks no. 4, 5, 6, 7, and 11 at the site of the German Auschwitz I camp. The International Auschwitz Council (IAC) accepted the idea of changing the exhibition last December.
The IAC is a consultative body reporting to the head of the Polish government on matters connected with the protection and use of the site of the Auschwitz Nazi camp and other extermination sites and concentration camps located within the present borders of Poland. The IAC has 25 members from various countries. They are authorities and prominent experts on issues connected with World War II, the concentration camps, and the Holocaust. They serve a term of 6 years. The Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage provides offices and secretarial support. . . .
