WWII 70 years later: Preserving the truth at Auschwitz

WARSAW, Poland — Among the artifacts at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, at the site of the most notorious Nazi concentration camps of World War II, are 110,000 shoes, 3,800 suitcases, 246 tallits (Jewish prayer shawls), 8,000 letters from prisoners and reams of documents from the SS, Adolf Hitler’s terrifying paramilitary force.

The sheer size of the archive that documents how 1.1 million people perished there during the Holocaust forces the museum’s keepers to at least try to distance themselves emotionally from their work.

“We usually treat these buildings or blocks just like we would treat any other preservation objects,” says Agnieszka Tanistra, acting head of the museum’s preservation department. “It’s a job to be done.”

Yet even seven decades after the camps were liberated by Soviet troops, it’s still impossible to fully maintain that distance.

“Suddenly a moment comes when we see a drawing or paint on the wall, and we start thinking of those prisoners who made them,” Tanistra says. “Or we discover a new object. These days it happens rarely. But just a few years ago, during the conservation of a pair of shoes, we found a piece of paper hidden in it, which turned out to be a kid’s math test.”

Tanistra and about 60 other preservationists also strive to strike a balance between the museum’s goal of preserving the authenticity of the camps for visitors and preventing the natural deterioration of structures that weren’t built to last.

“Barracks were meant to be just temporary,” she says. “Everyday personal things such as toothbrushes or shoes were never meant to last over 70 years. And we must fight to make them exist for generations to come.”

Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz and nearby Birkenau near Krakow in south-central Poland in January 1945. Some of the camps’ facilities were devoted exclusively to killing Jews according to the Nazis’ genocidal “final solution.” Others housed Poles, Russians, Roma, political prisoners, gays and slave laborers for a nearby chemical factory.

After liberation, the camps and the dusty, poor town nearby fell into neglect and disrepair as the region became the Soviet-controlled East Bloc. In the late 1980s, the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex offered nothing to accommodate visitors — not even documentation of what had happened there — and visitors were few.

That changed after the ouster of Poland’s Soviet-backed communist government in 1989. Money flowed in, visitors began to come in greater numbers and preservation efforts increased.

Within the worldwide community of Holocaust scholars, some wonder whether the preservation efforts are worth it. At great expense and effort, the museum has transformed a horrible place into a popular tourist destination. They question whether visitors can understand the depth of the suffering that occurred there.

“Is there a case for abandoning the site and letting nature take its course?” says Robert Jan Van Pelt, an architectural historian and Holocaust scholar at the University of Waterloo in Canada. “There is, and there isn’t. I continue to argue with myself on that.”

Museum officials believe the effort to remember is what matters. As the last survivors of Auschwitz and Birkenau die, the museum recounts their experiences for the tens of thousands of visitors who pass through the camps every week.

“Preserving Auschwitz is key to paying respect to all the people who went through the camp — those who died there but also those who survived,” Tanistra says. “Moreover, in abandoning the site, we will lose history to the Holocaust deniers.”

Museum director Piotr Cywiński adds: “Deniers are people of bad will, and no document or object would convince them otherwise. The museum is important for people of good will who want to try to understand what happened. It is easier for them to answer that question when they see the place.”

However, Cywiński and Tanistra have decided not to preserve one collection in the museum: the pile of human hair that weighs more than 4,400 pounds.

Some relatives of camp victims have said the hair should be buried out of respect for the dead. But museum officials decided the grisly exhibit should stay. It is temporary, after all. Today, the individual strands have lost their color and shape. Someday, they will decompose entirely and be gone forever.

“The hair is connected to the place. We do not know which parts of it belonged to survivors and which to those who died,” Cywiński says. “It is one of the most important evidence of the crimes committed by the Nazis. The hair will be displayed as long as it does not completely fall apart.”