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Dear Reader,

I am enclosing an Auschwitz Bulletin on behalf of the Auschwitz Museum and the Computer Center of the Technological University of Cracow (TUP). At the moment The A. Museum does not have access to e-mail and is using my address (for the Bulletin only!) and it has already started drawing up a list of possible e-mail recipients of the Bulletin. Therefore I would be grateful for the addresses of any institutions or persons you know which are likely to be interested in receiving it. It would also be appreciated if you could pass this Bulletin to anybody who may be interested.

Yours truly

Stefan Swiszczowski, swiszcz@usk.pk.edu.pl

AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU MUSEUM AND REFLECTION CENTRE OSWIECIM, POLAND

BULLETIN NO. 1
AUGUST 1, 1996

The history of the Auschwitz concentration camp and the role played by this place as a symbol of the martyrdom of Jews, Poles, Roma people and other nationalities has long stirred widespread public interest, and not only in the countries from which the victims came. The grounds of the State Museum and Reflection Centre, the location of the Auschwitz and Birkenau camps, is the largest and best-preserved Nazi concentration camp site. The camp, including the ruins of the crematoria and the gas chambers, has tremendous significance for understanding the mechanisms of genocide. This best-known concentration and death camp in occupied Europe also has a clear moral dimension. It is a place for reflection, contemplation and prayer, and for honoring the memory of the victims whose ashes are scattered across the fields of Brzezinka -- Birkenau -- the largest cemetery in the world.

Most of these ashes are the ashes of Jews. There are also, however, Poles, Roma people (the "Gypsies"), Soviet prisoners of war -- adherents of various religions that differ, among other things, in the forms used to remember their dead. This imposes on everyone an obligation of good will and understanding the beliefs of others. Such good will and understanding have been at times lacking in the resolution of misunderstandings that have arisen against this background. All of those to whom the memory of the victims of Auschwitz is dear agree on the need to maintain the dignity of this place far from the "bustle of the world," so that visitors can reflect upon the fate of the people who suffered and died here. This in turn requires appropriate spatial and legal solutions which can be difficult to reconcile with the interests of the city of Oswiecim and its inhabitants.

The mass media in Poland and abroad have devoted considerable attention to these problems, and to others associated with the broadly-conceived issue of Auschwitz, such as the now-historical controversies over the Carmelite convent or the number of victims at the camp. Information on the history of the Auschwitz concentration camp and the current problems of the Museum has not always been accurate or sufficiently comprehensive, nor have journalists always turned to the most competent authorities. There have been instances of conscious distortion or even downright mendacity. Apart from these, the Museum has also frequently failed to supply current information.

In order to avoid such difficulties, the International Council of the Museum has proposed the publication of a special bulletin for the Polish and international media, and for official and scholarly institutions. The Bulletin will appear at least quarterly, or more often as dictated by important events in or around the Museum. Published in Polish and English, it will be distributed simultaneously to interested persons and institutions by electronic mail and will be available on the Internet.

Attendance

There were more than 217,000 visitors to the Museum in the first half of 1996, including 120,000 from Poland and 97,000 from abroad. Most of the visitors were young people: 124,000, of whom approximately 95,000 came from Poland and 30,000 from abroad. 142 guides conducted tours. Public figures who visited the Museum included:

The Museum also hosted and provided information and technical assistance to 29 film and television crews from Poland, Germany, Israel, the United States, Sweden and Italy.

Ceremonies

A ceremony organized by the General Board of the Society for the Preservation of Oswiecim marked the fifty-first anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp on January 27. Diplomas and medals were presented to several dozen residents of Auschwitz and surrounding localities in recognition of their aid to camp prisoners during the war.

This year's "March of the Living" took place on April 16. Approximately 5,000 Jewish young people from all over the world walked in silence from Auschwitz to Birkenau, where kaddish, the prayer for the dead, was said at the Monument to Camp Victims. For the first time, students from the Hebrew-language class at the Wyspianski Eighth Secondary School in Cracow and from the Cracow Dominican Chaplaincy took part. Participants in the March were shown around the camp grounds by Museum guides from April 13-18.

A plaque commemorating Polish scouts imprisoned at the Auschwitz camp was unveiled on the wall of block 15 on June 14, the fifty-sixth anniversary of the transport to the concentration camp of the first group of Polish prisoners. The ceremony, organized by the Society for the Preservation of Oswiecim, began with the celebration of mass next to the "Death Block." Wreaths and flowers were also laid.

Exhibitions

Teresa Swiebocka and Teresa Zbrzeska have completed a new design for the permanent exhibition at the Sauna building on the grounds of the former Birkenau camp as part of the overall project for creating new permanent exhibitions and descriptive material.

The exhibition is intended to illustrate the special role of the Sauna, the functions of particular rooms, and the equipment that has been preserved. This will be achieved, among other means, through the use of photographs taken by SS officers while the camp was in operation.

The second important goal of the exhibition is to show who was deported to the camp, where they came from, and what they looked like. Visitors will learn through specific images that the camp's victims were people like everyone, like us. The authors of the exhibition will achieve this by displaying photographs, found after liberation, that had been brought to the camp by prisoners transported here. This part of the exhibition will aim more at an emotional effect than at the conveying of information as in a typical historical presentation.

Several traveling exhibitions have been presented abroad and on the grounds of the Oswiecim State Museum as part of the program of temporary exhibitions that has been underway for years. They include:

Publications

The long-awaited study Auschwitz 1940-1945. Wezlowe zagadnienia z dziejow obozu (Auschwitz 1940-1945: Crucial Issues from the History of the Camp) has been published. The editors are Waclaw Dlugoborski and Franciszek Piper and contributors include Danuta Czech, Tadeusz Iwaszko, Stanislaw Klodzinski, Helena Kubica, Aleksander Lasik, Franciszek Piper, Irena Strzelecka, Andrzej Strzelecki and Henryk Swiebocki. The work, totaling 1,250 pages, comprises five volumes:

On its own or in cooperation with other publishers, the Museum has brought out more than a dozen other titles in the first half of 1996. They include:

- Zeszyty Oswiecimskie (Auschwitz Publications), no. 21

- Hefte von Auschwitz nr 19

- Auschwitz - Voices from the Abyss (an album in English and Italian versions)

- Karski. Opowiesc o emisariuszu (Karski: Tale of an Emissary) by E. Thomas Wood and Stanislaw Jankowski.


The following memoirs by Auschwitz survivors were also published:

- Kazimierz Albin, List gonczy (Wanted List)

- Krystyna Zywulska, Przezylam Oswiecim (I Survived Auschwitz)

- Primo Levi, Czy to jest czlowiek? (Is This Man?)

- Halina Birenbaum, Nadzieja umiera ostatnia (Hope Dies Last)

- Miriam Akavia, Jesien mlodosci (The Autumn of Youth).

Museum guidebooks and video cassettes with the films Auschwitz and Auschwitz: History, the Present and the Future have been published in several languages. Two issues of the Pro Memoria information bulletin have appeared in Polish (no. 5) and English (no. 3-4).

Because of financial constraints, the Museum has been unable to cover the costs of so many publications. The Foundation in Memory of the Victims of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp has been extremely generous and has sponsored the printing of a large part of this year's titles.

Educational Activity

Two two-day seminars with talks on the fates of Poles and Jews in the Auschwitz concentration camp and participatory methodological workshops were held for 57 elementary school teachers of history and Polish language. Each participant received a packet with a model lesson to prepare children for a visit to Auschwitz.

Approximately 400 secondary school students from the city of Oswiecim took part in showings of documentary films and film essays on themes related to the concentration camp, with introductory lectures.

As every year, courses for guides were held with lectures on Crematorium I, the SS staff in the concentration camp, and the Kielce pogrom.

Candidates for posts as German-language guides were interviewed and selected. Short guides to the Museum in Polish and English were prepared for distribution to visitors.

Collections

In January 1996, the Military Archives Commission conveyed photocopies of files on Auschwitz prisoners from the Center for the Preservation of Historical-Documentary Collections in Moscow to the Museum. More than 1,800 written questionnaires were sent to former prisoners and their families, on the subject of their own or their relatives' fates in the camp. Participants in study groups from Poland, Austria and Germany, film crews, students and scholarly researchers made use of documents preserved from the camp.

Work on the collections has gone on regardless of inconveniences caused by renovation work: 79 works by Jozef Szajna have been accepted on deposit from the Studio Art Centre in Warsaw, and engravings on Jewish themes by Jonasz Stern have been purchased. 205 titles have been added to the library. 126 volumes donated by institutions and private individuals, and all the new books have been catalogued. The new acquisitions concern the Holocaust and the history of Auschwitz and other concentration camps. A file of press cuttings is being kept. The library had 666 visitors, and its resources were also used by groups of young people from Germany. Orientation sessions on the library's activities were held for schoolteachers. There is continuing cooperation in loans with the Jagiellonian Library.

Contact with Former Prisoners

The activities of the Section for Former Prisoners, created in 1995, have included a survey of Auschwitz survivors. This was preceded by a mailing of appeals and questionnaires to various veterans' organizations and associations of former prisoners in Poland and abroad. Accounts by former prisoners and people who aided Auschwitz prisoners were recorded. Surveys were taken on the subject of people who helped prisoners and on the prisoners' stays in the camp. Work continued on the preparation of subject and name indexes to the accounts and testimony of former prisoners.

A file of names of people deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp was prepared on the basis of post-war sources (literature, press, data from veterans' organizations and the name index).

The Section for Former Prisoners contributed several dozen documents (camp letters, photographs and others) to the Museum Archives.

Preservation Work

Conservation and renovation was carried out on the doors to the barracks in Brzezinka (Birkenau), conservation of the wooden doors and windows in blocks 19 and 25, and tree conservation and landscaping work were done with funds from the Museum budget and with financial support provided by the Foundation in Memory of the Victims of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp.

The following work was undertaken with means provided by the German government and the German Federal Lands:

Computerization

A decision was taken in January to extend the computerization program of the Museum to further sections. In combination with the existing Computer Section, the new, up-to-date computer network will make the Museum the best-equipped institution of its type in Europe. Financial support has come from the Foundation in Memory of the Victims of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp, and expertise from the Jagiellonian University Foundation for Computer Education and the representative for the Computerization of Museums from the Polish Ministry of Culture. As a result of this work, a computer network serving 22 workstations was activated in May.

The April Demonstration

In connection with the demonstration organized on May 6 1996 by the Katowice Provincial Board of the Polish National Community/Polish National Party, the Museum Administration issued the following statement:

Under an act of the Polish Sejm (parliament), the grounds of the former Nazi Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp have been designated as a site of the Martyrdom of Nations. Auschwitz is today a symbol of human annihilation caused by racial prejudice, hatred and intolerance. It is a symbol of the Holocaust for Jews, of the martyrdom and combat of Poles, and of the extermination of the Roma people (the "Gypsies"). Auschwitz is a cemetery, where everyone can pay tribute to the murdered.

In view of the exceptional and sacred nature of this place, it is not to be exploited for any sort of demonstration with a goal other than that of remembering the victims.

The Museum Administration has always expressed the view that gatherings or demonstrations cannot take place on the grounds of the former camp for any purpose apart from commemoration. For this reason, we maintain the above opinion in regard to the demonstration organized on April 6 1996 by the Katowice Provincial Board of the Polish National Community/Polish National Party.

The Museum Administration withheld approval of this demonstration in a letter to the Mayor of the City of Oswiecim, and stands by its decision.

Oswiecim, April 6, 1996

The "Supermarket" Issue

Over the last few months there have been many protests and a great deal of controversy over the construction of a commercial facility located in the Protective Zone of the Oswiecim-Brzezinka State Museum, opposite the gate of the former camp. It was to occupy an existing building there, remodeled, covering a total of 45,000 square feet. On the grounds that it did not conflict with the character of the Protective Zone, the City authorities granted a building permit. Many foreign groups, especially Jewish ones, but Polish groups as well, were of a different opinion (sixty percent of respondents in a Polish public opinion survey expressed their opposition).

As a result of the protests, the provincial governor halted construction and later withdrew the permit. Other plans for using this property and a change of investors are under consideration.

After an on-site inspection and examination of the documentation, the Presidium of the International Council of the Museum expressed the opinion that commercial activity meeting the needs of pilgrims and visitors is permissible with in the Protective Zone, if carried out in an appropriate manner. At the same time, the Council proposed relocating the bar, parking lot and kiosks now sited on the grounds of the Museum to the site of the planned commercial facility. The Council also drew attention to the needs of the City of Oswiecim and suggested the formulation of a general municipal development program taking account of the international significance of the Oswiecim Museum.

The opinion of the Council was accepted by the Ministry of Culture and Art, which supervises the Museum, and was also incorporated in a broad program prepared by the local authorities and the Polish government. This program includes the regulation of the Protective Zone, the rebuilding of local roads, the preservation of landmarks, and the development of infrastructure in line with the character of the city and the needs of visitors.

A plan prepared by the Museum Administration for the creation of an International Educational Centre, primarily for teacher training, has been included in this program. The Centre, in cooperation with existing institutions in Oswiecim with similar goals, would provide large numbers of teachers and educators with knowledge about the former camp, its origins and the results of its activity. The Centre would extend education to the youth of a Europe on the road to integration, but still full of conflicts.

The Issue of the Crosses on the Grounds of Birkenau

In his speech in Kielce during the anniversary of the pogrom there (July 7), Elie Wiesel demanded the removal of crosses from fields full of the ashes of victims from the crematorium pyres. The crosses and stars were placed there years ago by a group of young people from Warsaw, who had been working at caring for that part of the camp for several years, as a way of honoring the memory of the victims.

Wiesel considered this to be an insult to Jews and expressed the opinion that there should be no religious symbols on the grounds of the former camp. This in turn caused numerous protests in Poland and intensified the discussion on the varied meanings and interpretations of religious symbols, the varieties of sensitivity, ways of understanding tolerance and paths to reconciliation and cooperation for the good of future generations.

This matter was also taken up by the International Council of the Museum at its meeting on July 8-9. It turned out that this is a very complex problem that requires further reflection and discussion. The Council authorized its chairman, Professor Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, to undertake initiatives aimed at finding a solution without injuring anyone's feelings. A dossier on the issue of the cross will be prepared in the immediate future.

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