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Saving the authenticity - our shared responsibility. Auschwitz Memorial Report 2010
"The fight against time and the destruction of the historical space of the original camp is today the greatest challenge and our shared responsibility—to the victims and to the Survivors, but also to future generations, our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren," we read in the 2010 Annual Report of the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum. The sixty-eight color pages of this Polish-English publication include information about the most important events of 2010.
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The report focuses mainly on the efforts to preserve the authenticity of the grounds of the German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp Auschwitz, and above all the work of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation. "We continue to hope that we will be able to begin the essential conservation work in 2012. 45 brick barracks from the Birkenau women's camp represent the most pressing challenge," we read in the review of the work of the Foundation, which has managed so far to raise about €80 million of the needed €120 million. This money will go into the Foundation's Emergency Fund. The "Intervene Now" public campaign is also intended to help raise the needed sum.
"Authenticity is also testimony. Yet it differs from the accounts by former prisoners. The words of Primo Levi, Imre Kertesz, Elie Wiesel, and many others are a great challenge to the imagination of postwar humanity. A visit to the Memorial gives roots to that imagination awakened by words, placing it in a concrete space, on tangible ground, in uncompromisingly experienced reality," writes Museum Director Dr. Piotr M.A. Cywiński in the introduction to the report.
A great deal of space in the report is also dedicated to the conservation work carried out at the Memorial and the design of the modern Visitor Service Center that will be built adjacent to the Museum. Other subjects include the programs and seminars at the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust, volunteering and student internships, new publications, ongoing scholarly research, and new acquisitions by the Museum Archives and Collections.
The report also provides detailed information about the number of visitors. It is noteworthy that 1,380,000 people, a record in the history of the Memorial, visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in 2010. Another important part of the report is the financial summary and the list of donors who supported the Museum. The text is accompanied by photographs illustrating the most important events at the Memorial and reproductions of works of art, artifacts, and archival documents.
