News
Stutthof and Vienna—Discussions about Memorials
Two conferences on Memorials at the sites of German concentration camps and extermination centers took place in early September. The First Remembrance Forum Seminar of Polish Martyrdom Museums at the Stutthof Museum featured discussions focusing on education. A conference at the Polish Academy of Sciences Research Station in Vienna compared the situation at memorials in Poland and Austria. Members of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum staff attended both.
The Stutthof seminar on September 4 accompanied observances marking the seventy-first anniversary of the first transport of prisoners to that camp. Personnel from the Stutthof, Auschwitz, Lublin (Majdanek), Treblinka, Lamsdorf, and Żabików museums were joined by staff from the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk, due to open soon. The main goals of the Remembrance Forum were exchanging experiences in education and discussing the current challenges facing martyrdom museums in Poland.
The International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust gave a presentation on e-learning and educational projects for atypical target groups including prison inmates. Auschwitz Memorial staff also spoke about the issue of preserving historical collections, the role of volunteers in conservation workshops, and the use of new media to increase the public profile of knowledge about the history of Auschwitz.
Deputy Minister of National Education Mirosław Sielatycki participated in the meeting. His presence sparked discussions about ways to coordinate the history curriculum in schools with visits to memorial sites.
A scholarly conference on Memorials and Museums at Nazi Concentration Camp Sites: The Present State of Affairs and Perspectives for Development, hosted by the Polish Academy of Sciences Research Station, took place in Vienna on September 9-10. It covered the state of preservation and the perspectives and challenges facing memorial sites in Poland and Austria.
Personnel fro the Auschwitz-Birkenau, Stutthof, Majdanek, and Mauthausen, Gusen, and Hartheim memorials attended. “The important thing for us was to create a forum and exchange experience between representatives of Polish and Austrian memorials, and to discuss ways in which those institutions can serve in the future as a warning against the dangers of Nazism,” said the director of the Research Station, Prof. Bogusław Dybaś.
“The people in Austria responsible for the Mauthausen Memorial are now discussing changes in the explication of the historical space and a new exhibition narrative. An exchange of recent experiences between Mauthausen and Auschwitz-Birkenau and other former Nazi German camps in postwar Poland has become very important today. It must be remembered that Poles constituted an enormous contingent among the victims of the Mauthausen complex. The joint discussion of commemoration is therefore our duty,” said Auschwitz Museum Director Dr. Piotr M.A. Cywiński, who spoke in Vienna about the contemporary significance of the symbolism of the Auschwitz Memorial and the assumptions concerning the new main exhibition there.
The conference also considered the contemporary culture of remembrance, projects and concepts for museum education, conservation issues, the difficult history of the creation of memorial sites in Austria, and the political meanderings in postwar Poland on the commemoration of the sites of Nazi camps.
