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Young Guardians of Memory. Youth art contest People Did This to Other People
Entries that won prizes and honorable mention in the art contest titled People Did This to Other People were shown for the tenth time at the Youth Culture House in Tychy. The honorary patron was Dr. Piotr M.A. Cywiński, director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, which was a co-organizer. Interest in the 10th-anniversary contest was enormous; the jury reviewed no fewer than 998 entries by young artists from Poland, the Czech Republic, Italy, and Russia.
"The quantity is proof that young people want to remember, and want to accept the role of guardians of history from the eyewitnesses who will not be with us forever," said Teresa Wodzicka, director of the Youth Culture House in Tychy. The organizers feel that the contest gives the entrants a chance to present their dreams about a better world?without violence, aggression, genocide, xenophobia, or racism.
Thirty-two entries received prizes, forty-one received honorable mention, and 141 were accepted for display at the exhibition. The jury was made up of three former Auschwitz prisoners: August Kowalczyk, Jerzy Maria Ulatowski, and Florian Granek, as well as Professor Adam Romaniuk of the Katowice Fine Arts Academy, the artist Bogusław Trybus, and the historian and artist Robert Płaczek of the Exhibition Department at the Auschwitz Museum. "The Museum has been gracious to us in terms of organizational assistance," said Teresa Wodzicka. "This has brought the contest to life and turned it into an important event."
"The commission was astounded by the high standard of the submissions, especially in view of the age of the entrants," said Jerzy Ulatowski, who also pointed out the importance of the international aspect of the contest. "Some of the works that won prizes or honorable mention came from people outside Poland who were in their teens, and thus could have no idea of what things were like at the time when the camp was in operation," he said.
"It is a positive development that young people from all around the world entered the contest, since Auschwitz is not exclusively a Polish tragedy and not only Poles should remember it," said Teresa Wodzicka.
Many of the works were symbolic. "My entry depicts a teddy-bear leaning on a barbed-wire fence. For me, this is a symbol of the suffering of the youngest children, who were treated so terribly. They were not allowed to have a happy childhood," said Katarzyna Trzcińska, a student in the first year at the gimnazjum in Ruda Śląska.
August Kowalczyk sent a special message to the participants, in which he wrote: "After all these years, the hands of little children this time, without numbers – the hands of children in the care of loving mothers, have magically opened to other children the memory of that bygone world of children-prisoners in Auschwitz, in Birkenau, and in Monowitz. It turns out that our children today have sufficient knowledge to express the cry ‹We remember!› in colorful, artistic forms."
The exhibition People Did This to Other People is on view until the end of April at the Youth Culture House in Tychy.
