News
The History of Auschwitz Concentration Camp in French
Simone Veil, chairwoman of the French Shoah Memorial Foundation, has informed the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum of a decision to award the Museum 40,000 euro as a subsidy for the translation into French and publication in that language of the “big Auschwitz monograph” – a collective work on the history of the Death Camp, written mostly by Museum research staff.
The first edition of the monograph—five volumes totaling almost 2,000 pages with 3,400 footnotes—came out in Polish in 1996 under the title Auschwitz 1940-1945. Węzłowe zagadnienia z dziejów obozu. The German version came out three years later, financed by the Polish Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp victims Memorial Foundation. The English version, co-financed by the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, came out in 2000.
After the appearance of the English version, Irving Greenberg, a member of the council of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, called it the most complete work on the history of Auschwitz concentration Camp in terms of its detailed approach and use of original sources. Similar opinions had been voiced in earlier reviews of the Polish and German editions.
The French version will feature additional findings from the latest research. Piotr Setkiewicz has added new and revised data on some Auschwitz sub-camps. The section on the Buna camp in Monowice has been doubled in length. Aleksander Lasik has broadened the material on the camp SS garrison and Helena Kubica has added several dozen pages of documents, accounts, and memoirs, which she has been editing over the last few years, on the subject of children in Auschwitz
Simone Veil – deported from France to Auschwitz Concentration Camp in 1944, at the age of 17, because she was Jewish. She lost her mother in the camp. She has been French minister of health and of social affairs and, from 1979 to 1982, the first chairwoman of the European parliament.
Auschwitz 1940-1945. Central Issues in the History of the Camp
This large publication—five volumes hardcover with illustrations, documents, bibliography and indexes—is a collection of historical studies illustrating various aspects of the origins and operation of the Auschwitz concentration camp and death camp, many of which were previously unknown to most researchers. The authors attempt to shed light on matters that are controversial and resistant to unambiguous evaluation, and to correct certain theses and assumptions long accepted by historians in Poland and abroad.
As compared to other historical works, the monograph:
- presents the history of the camp against a broader background of the overall policies of the Third Reich and its satellites;
- details the deportations to Auschwitz from various countries and the responsibility for the deportation and subsequent fate of the victims that is shared by many German and collaborating institutions; - significantly broadens the subjects of mass extermination, the resistance movement, the specific situations of the Jews, Poles, Gypsies, and victims of other ethnic backgrounds.
- takes up the previously little-known issue of identifying the 7,000 men and women in the SS garrison and their backgrounds, occupations, education, age, religious attitudes, etc.
Publisher: Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau
Editors: Wacław Długoborski i Franciszek Piper
Contributors: Danuta Czech, Tadeusz Iwaszko, Stanisław Kłodziński, Helena Kubica, Aleksander Lasik, Franciszek Piper, Piotr Setkiewicz, Irena Strzelecka, Andrzej Strzelecki, Henryk Świebocki,
- Polish version : Auschwitz 1940-1945. Węzłowe zagadnienia z dziejów obozu; 1995, 5 volumes, 1250 pp.;
- German version: Auschwitz 1940-1945. Studien zur Geschichte des Konzentrations und Vernichtungslagers Auschwitz; 1999, 5 volumes, 2076 pp.;
- English version: Auschwitz 1940-1945. Central Issues in the History of the Camp; 2000, 5 volumes, 1799 pp.
