News
"Preserve Authenticity" - online educational session on preservation - 28 May 2024.
The International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust extends an invitation for your participation in an online educational session "Preserve Authenticity." The session's primary focus will be on conservation issues at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum. It will take place on 28 May and will conducted via the Zoom platform with simultaneous English translation.
During the session, the Museum conservators will present various aspects of their work, including the conservation of the gas chambers and crematoria ruins, the prisoners' brick and wood barracks at the former Auschwitz II-Birkenau site, and the preservation of wall paintings and historical elements in the buildings at the former Auschwitz I site. They will also delve into the importance of preserving the greenery.
An element of the session will be a presentation on the Master Plan for Preservation funded by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, as well the issue of how historical documents can support conservators' work.
"Preserve Authenticity. Site, buildings, ruins"| PROGRAMME
TIME ZONE CEST
16.00-16.15 | Inauguration of the session - Rafał Pióro, deputy director of the Museum responsible for preserving authenticity
16.15-16.30 | Site and buildings of the former Auschwitz Concentration Camp - conservation and preservation - Jolanta Banaś-Maciaszczyk, Head of Preservation
16.30-17.45 | PANEL I
-) Zentralbauleitung der Waffen-SS und Polizei – "source texts" for conservation - Jadwiga Kulasza
-) The brick barracks conservation in BI sector of the former Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp - implementation of comprehensive conservation works by the Museum's personnel - Ewa Cyrulik,
-) Conservation of the wooden barracks in section BIIa of the former Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp. Desalination of wood affected by chemical corrosion as one of the scopes of conservation work - Maria Urban-Dąbek
-) Conservation of wall paintings and other historical traces in the buildings of the former Auschwitz I camp - Margrit Bormann
-) Conservation of the ruins of the gas chambers and crematoria at the former Auschwitz II- Birkenau site - Jolanta Banaś-Maciaszczyk
Break
18.00-19.00 | PANEL II
-) Master Plan for Preservation - Purpose and implementation - Agnieszka Tanistra - Różanowska
-) The utilisation of modern digital technologies in the preservation of historical buildings of the Auschwitz Museum - Tomasz Zemla
-) Presentation, overview, and summary of documentation techniques employed by the Auschwitz Museum - Kamil Będkowski
-) Maintenance and conservation of greenery at the former Auschwitz camp premises - Agnieszka Wieliczko
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Participation in the session is free.
Please submit your applications using the online form by 24 May 2024. After this date, you will receive an email containing a link to join the meeting.
The challenges of conservation at the Memorial are enormous. 155 buildings and about 300 ruins are under the supervision of the conservators. This includes the ruins of four gas chambers and crematoria in the former Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp vital to the history of Auschwitz, over 13 km of fences from 3.6 thousand concrete pillars and many other elements. Kilometres of roads, drainage ditches, and railway tracks with the unloading ramp are located in an area of nearly 200 hectares. Historical and post-war low greenery and tree stands (including 20 hectares of forest) are continuously subjected to conservation.
A significant portion of works conducted constitutes conservation processed of different movable objects from the Museum’s Collections. It includes, among others about 110,000 shoes, about 3,800 suitcases, approx. 12,000 pots, 470 prostheses and orthoses, 390 items of camp clothing, 246 talliths and 4,100 works of art made by prisoners and Survivors. The Museum archive preserves nearly 250 metres of current documents.
Such scope of work conducted at the Auschwitz Memorial also required new financial solutions. In 2009, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation was created. Its objective is to create a Perpetual Fund for financing conservation works and preserving all the authentic remains of the former German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz.
Our online lesson talks about the conservation challenges at the Auschwitz Museum.
