News
New main exhibition. The first part devoted to the experiences of Auschwitz prisoners is available to visitors.
The first of three parts of the Museum’s new main exhibition will be opened to visitors on 12 December. The exhibition “Auschwitz – Experiences of Camp Prisoners” in Blocks 8 and 9 presents the fates and experiences of those registered in the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz.
The remaining two parts will be completed within the next five years. Ultimately, visitors will first encounter an exhibition presenting Auschwitz as an institution consciously created and developed by Nazi Germany, followed by an exhibition on the extermination of Jews in Auschwitz.
The authors of the exhibition scenario are Museum Director Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywiński and Head of the Research Center Dr. Piotr Setkiewicz. The entire multi-year project is financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.
During the session of the International Auschwitz Council held on 18-19 November, Director Piotr Cywiński said: “This is a deeply moving moment for us, because we have been working on the exhibition for over 12 years. It is also profoundly important that members of the International Auschwitz Council—among them Survivors whose voices were so crucial in shaping the postwar memory of Auschwitz, such as Prof. Władysław Bartoszewski, Marian Turski, and Israel Gutman—contributed to this work. Their reflections were of immense value to us.”
He added: “I would also like to thank the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. Governments and ministers changed several times, yet all respected the decision to carry out this exhibition, a very costly undertaking, as it includes the conservation of six historical post-camp buildings.”
The exhibition in Blocks 8 and 9 is built around three core themes: registration, daily life in the camp, and the prisoners’ inner experience. These themes are illustrated through original objects, quotations from Survivors, and artistic works.
The first part introduces visitors to the different groups of prisoners registered in the camp, as well as the stages of the brutal and humiliating process of transformation into a prisoner: the initial shock, forced nudity during bathing, shaving of hair, confiscation of all personal belongings, receiving the striped camp uniform, and the registration itself, symbolized by personal cards, camp photographs, and the tattooed number.
The second part presents daily camp life: from the morning bell, to washing, meals, roll calls, hours of slave labor, and the night spent in the camp barracks.
The final part is devoted to the inner experiences of prisoners, the constant elements of camp existence. The themes include exhaustion, hunger, cold, corporeality, fear, numbness, hopelessness, and death.
“When considering the entire exhibition in the Museum, one must clearly understand that visitors will enter the display in the original camp blocks after having passed through the ‘Arbeit macht frei’ gate. After leaving it, they will remain for a long time in the post-camp landscape, both in Auschwitz I and Birkenau. In creating the exhibition, we had to remember that it is only an introduction, preparing visitors for the confrontation with the authentic place where such immense evil occurred,” said Dr. Piotr Setkiewicz.
Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywiński emphasized: “In a world in which narrative-historical exhibitions have become fashionable, we have consciously taken a major step back and created an exhibition that is decidedly more phenomenological, one that does not define or narrate but presents.”
As the exhibition catalogue states: “ Instead of telling the story, the exhibition focuses on showing it. This is a conscious decision, inspired by the approach of Survivors who developed the first post-war exhibition. They were guided by the principle that in such a location, history should speak with images and evidence, not just words. That is why in the new exhibition, the guide serves as the narrator, explaining the issues as they arise.”
The author of the conceptual design, Bartłomiej Pochopień, explained that the exhibition, created for millions of visitors over the coming decades, places great emphasis on universality and durability of message: “It does so by highlighting the significance of the authenticity of the place and the objects, among other means by minimizing architectural interventions.”
“Both the choice of the most meaningful objects and the architecture of the exhibition: the interior design, the choice of finishing materials, and technological solutions, take into account not only the special location and the conservation needs of the historical buildings, but also the high number of visitors moving through the Museum in guided groups.”
Across the two blocks, visitors can see 153 original objects, including: prisoner clogs and striped uniforms, bowls and a spoon, a bread scale, a razor, a barber’s chair used for shaving prisoners, a camp bell, a whip, shovels, a soup ladle, a bench for flogging, a board listing daily prisoner numbers, and even the music stand and baton of the camp orchestra’s conductor.
Particularly moving are small personal items that reveal how prisoners tried to preserve their humanity in the horrific world of the camp, such as: a comb, a shaving brush, medicines, cigarette and matchboxes, a board game with a chess pawn, a handmade doll, a ring, and a devotional medallion.
The exhibition also includes around 2,400 photographs of prisoners, 489 registration documents, and 29 works of art created by Auschwitz Survivors: Wincenty Gawron, Franciszek Jaźwiecki, Jan Komski, Mieczysław Kościelniak, Halina Ołomucka, and Władysław Siwek.
Another component is the Remembrance Archive, which presents hundreds of pages of testimonies by Survivors, as well as first editions of their memoirs.
“Although the memories are painful, they feel that they have a kind of mission, that they owe it to those who did not survive the camp. By writing down their thoughts, they show in detail every step of how the prisoners were destroyed and stripped of dignity, all while describing the mechanisms that led to the genocide at Auschwitz, saying “never again” to the next generation,” the exhibition catalogue notes.
Before the official opening, the exhibition was viewed by members of the International Auschwitz Council and by international experts cooperating with the Museum.
The entire New Main Exhibition will replace the previous display, which—with some modifications—has existed since 1955. It will be presented on the ground floors of six historical blocks of the former Auschwitz I camp, numbered 4 through 9.
Because the exhibition is designed to be visited with a guide, it is accompanied by a catalogue published in English and Polish, which significantly expands on the topics presented in the display.
