Living in Auschwitz is finished!

It has been a while ago that we have updated this blog. Therefore, a short update on the project:

In early April we started our two week period of filming and editing the 25 minute version of Living in Auschwitz. Despite harsh weather conditions (wind, melting snow), we finished the shooting with a good feeling.

Filming at the train station in Oswiecim

Man walking by with his dog in Birkenau

The 25 minute version of Living in Auschwitz has been accepted by Belgium’s public broadcaster VRT and will be aired on the second channel (Canvas) on May 16.

In the meantime, we started a crowd funding campaign to finance the editing of a 45 minute version, to be used for screenings and educational workshops at universities and in museums. You can find the link, and teaser here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/living-in-auschwitz/x/10752742.

All support is welcome.

We will keep you posted!

‘Shape your abilities’

‘Oswiecim is an ice-hockey town’, someone told me. The large ice-rink in the southern part of town can accommodate thousands of spectators who come every weekend to watch a match played by teams from the Polish highest league.

‘When Oswiecim won the league in 1992 it was the first time that I had seen images from the town on Polish television in a context that had nothing to do with Auschwitz’, local journalist Łukasz Razowski told me.

The enthusiasm amongst the inhabitants and supporters is significant. For the home match against local rival, GKS Tychy, about 5000 people came to the stadium. As every “self-respecting” sports club, also Unia Oswiecim has its ‘ultras’, diehard supporters who are filling the stadium with decibels. When approaching them with a question whether we could take pictures of their cheering, they are quite dismissive. The reputation of Oswiecim’s ultras is rather bad, and in the press their image is often linked to violence and criminality. After some insistence and securing the support of the hockey club’s president, the leader of the group agreed to answer a few questions.

Unia Oswiecim’s ‘ultras’

Also the hockey supporters in Oswiecim are often reminded about the history of their town by fans of other teams. As a reaction, they designed a sticker for Oswiecim fans, which says KSU: Kształtuj Swoje Umiejętności, ‘Shape your abilities’, in English. The slogan is encircled by barbed wire, as a reference to the history of the town. Firstly, I considered this slogan and depiction to be an ironical reference to challenge cliché ideas about the town and the club. Locals in Oswiecim, which named itself ‘City of Peace’, usually don’t want to reproduce symbols referring to the camp that could engender the clichés about the town. But it turned out that the sticker was meant to communicate a more serious message than I anticipated. The barbed wire reference is also to scare rival clubs, to show boldness and sturdiness.

‘Shape your abilities’

Contemporary nationalism, racism and anti-semitism in the neighbourhood of Auschwitz is more complex than I expected before I came to Oswiecim. I thought the proximity of the Auschwitz site would make people more thoughtful, and that the constant confrontation with what is left of the Holocaust would directly impact initial roots of racist discourses and nationalist ideologies. I imagined people would have fully internalized the ‘never again’ message. But the picture in Oswiecim is more complex. Surely, in a lot of local institutions which work in the Holocaust sector one can find admirable people, fully engaged in making Oswiecim, and Auschwitz, a place of peace and dialogue.

But often outside these institutions, it seems that the proximity of Auschwitz rather reinforces than weakens racist ideas. Local frustrations with the traffic jams caused by ‘the camp’ are rather innocent, but it occurred to me more than once that someone whispered in my ear something like: “it is because of the Jews that we did not get a McDonalds for years”. Apart from these direct frustrations related to the daily functioning of a town next to the Auschwitz Museum, there seems to be also a structural neglect amongst some local policy makers when it comes to anti-semitic and racist issues.

When we reported on anti-semitic graffiti in former Birkenau barracks, we were deeply shocked finding hate speech on such a symbolic place. Our astonishment was well understood by the readers of the articles and Belgian media which were aware of the necessity of reporting such news and challenging the message the graffiti wanted to provoke. But local authority figures we initially reported the issue to did not seem to realize that having anti-semitic graffiti in former Birkenau barracks was a severe problem.

Two days after the graffiti had been found, we called the local city guards to ask if they were taking action to remove the graffiti. We were told that the Birkenau area is too far from the center of Oswiecim for them to take action. Birkenau is part of the village Brzezinka, which is part of the Oswiecim municipality, but outside of the area of responsibility of the city guards of Oswiecim. We were asked to call the police. We called the local police 6 times, but no one picked up. After one week the graffiti was still there.

At that time we had an interview with the mayor of Oswiecim. We informed him in person about the graffiti, but he did not seem very move by the story. It was not his responsibility to signal the police, he told us, we should do it. We could have been naive, but we thought having anti-semitic graffiti in the ‘City of Peace’ would bother its mayor a bit more.

Because also the police did not seem to be interested, we decided to call the Wójt, the governor of the area around Oswiecim which includes Brzezinka where the graffiti was found. It was 4 weeks after the graffiti had been signaled, and it was still there, everyone could read the horrible message. Eventually, after sending two messages  to the Wójt, who seems to be overloaded with work and reportedly has access to a very small budget, it took a few days until the action was taken and the graffiti was painted over by his employees. We were informed by his secretary on the phone that apart from the graffiti that we found, another three were discovered and painted over.

In short, challenging anti-semitism next to Auschwitz does not seem to be a priority for some local governors, despite Oswiecim’s status of ‘City of Peace’. It is seems that overexposure to Auschwitz generates the opposite effect to what peace makers want to attribute to the memory of Auschwitz. The ‘City of Peace’ message appears to be solely confined to discourse and ideology, and it aims at improving the reputation of Oswiecim. ‘City-branding’ as policy analysts would call it. But as our struggle shows, there exists a gap between talking about peace and the concrete action that it involves. When asking the ultras of hockey club Unia Oswiecim about the town’s role in peace making, they said: ‘City of Peace is just another silly thing designed by politicians using our money.’

UPDATED – Vandalen bekladden Auschwitzbarakken met antisemtische graffiti

Eind januari was de hele werelds aandacht gericht op Auschwitz. Een hele schare aan wereldleiders bepleitte er vrede en verdraagzaamheid naar aanleiding van de zeventigjarige verjaardag van de bevrijding van het vernietigingskamp. Nu de aandacht ietwat geluwd is, hebben vandalen de kans gegrepen barakken van het voormalig vernietigingskamp te bekladden met antisemitische graffiti. De consternatie is groot, zowel bij de lokale bevolking als bij de toeristen die het kamp bezoeken.

De graffiti is gespoten in bloedrood en toont een galg waaraan een Davidster hangt. Eronder staat in drukletters in het Pools: ‘Chciwosc Israel’. ‘Hebzucht Israël’, in het Nederlands. De graffiti is aangebracht op een voormalige barak van het Birkenau kamp (Auschwitz II), het kamp waarin zich de gaskamers bevonden, en is gericht op de straat zodat het zichtbaar is voor alle voorbijgangers.

Antisemitische graffiti in Birkenau’s Kartoffelbarakken

Een lokale inwoner vertelt verontwaardigd over de actie die ze ondernam om de graffiti weg te halen: ‘Omdat de graffiti is aangebracht op een barak die nét buiten het domein van het Auschwitz museum valt, doet het museum niets. Ik heb naar de lokale stadswacht gebeld en ben bij de burgemeester geweest in Oswiecim (Pools voor Auschwitz), maar die vertelden me dat het een regionale bevoegdheid is om zo’n een graffiti weg te nemen. Bij de regionale politie werd de telefoon echter niet opgenomen. Ondertussen ziet iedereen een verschrikkelijke boodschap op deze symbolische plaats.’

Tomek Kuncewicz, directeur van het Auschwitz Jewish Center, reageerde geschrokken: ‘Normaal zou ik mijn eigen witte verf nemen en het overschilderen, maar het is niet duidelijk wie de eigenaar is van de barak, dus durf ik nog geen actie ondernemen.’ Ondertussen zou er een klacht ingediend zijn bij de gouverneur van de provincie.

Europa wordt de laatste maanden steeds meer opgeschrikt door antisemitische incidenten. Op vierentwintig mei werden vier mensen gedood bij een aanslag op het Joods Museum in Brussel, in februari stierven twee mensen in een synagoge in Kopenhagen en nog in februari werd in Frankrijk een Joods kerkhof vernield voor herrieschoppers. Antisemitisme is in Polen echter minder ‘terug van weg geweest’ dan in West-Europa. Ondanks een vergrootte interesse voor de Joodse tradities en het ontstaan van een Joodse festivalcultuur in Poland toont onderzoek uit 2011 aan dat van alle Europese landen Polen (samen met Hongarije) het meest antisemitisch zou zijn (http://bit.ly/1M5cwDD). Het aantreffen van antisemitische graffiti op gebouwen is dus niet uitzonderlijk, maar de locatie van deze graffiti, op een voormalige Auschwitzbarak, maakt het wel erg luguber.

Update: Ondertussen heeft het team van de lokale ‘Wójt’ (burgemeester van de dorpjes rond Oswiecim) de graffiti weg gehaald door het te overschilderen. De verantwoordelijken deden dit na verder onderzoek in de barakken, waaruit bleek dat nog drie andere anti-semitische graffiti’s moesten overschilderd worden.

(Dit artikel verscheen eerder op http://www.newsmonkey.be)

Digging for bunkers and stories

“Living for the weekend” is an attitude dominating our working life. We all have our preferred weekend activities – some do sports or go on trips, others clean or devote their time to family or friends..  There are also many original ways to spend the two days off work. In Oświęcim we found a group of friends who busy themselves with a rather extraordinary hobby on Saturday mornings. Guided by maps from 1940s, they scrupulously explore former SS-bunkers spread around the whole town. The group calls themselves Bunkrowcy – loosely translated as “Bunker people” or “Bunker hunters”. As they explained to us, about 150 bunkers have been built all over Oświęcim under Nazi occupation and many of them have been preserved – some have been already located and discovered, but there is a number which still remains to be found and explored.

The group of “Bunker hunters”

“Bunker hunters” meet in the center of a residential area in Oświęcim every Saturday morning. When we arrive, they are almost all there: about ten men of various ages. Mirosław Ganobis, a local historian is discussing the plan for the day with two very young guys. They are holding small shovels to dig in the ground to access bunkers that have not been explored for the last seventy years. Piotr ‘Pietia’ Sikora, bass player from the local punk-ska band “Krzywa Alternatywa” and a former miner from a nearby coal mine, is discussing with a fellow miner which bunkers will be safe to enter. After a few minutes of introductory conversation, we get into the cars again and begin the expedition.

Our first stop is in the residential area of Oświęcim, the Chemikow housing district. We begin with checking out some bunkers which the group has already found before in a little park opposite to the ice rink. We are following the group members into two or three bunkers – it takes quite a while to walk through the construction until we reach the other exit or some blocked corridor.

The next stop is the industrial district of former Nazi IG-Farben factory. We are told that some of the bunkers are very difficult to access because the owners of the properties do not want to allow anyone to come in. Some other ones have been already destroyed, Mirosław tells us – when buildings are reconstructed or redeveloped the owners sometimes ‘by the way’ destroy the bunkers. “In that manner the remaining traces of the past are irreversibly lost’, Piotr adds.

What motivates the group to search for and document the bunkers is precisely this drive to preserve what still exists of the Oświęcim’s World War Two occupation period. “When searching for the bunkers and exploring them we keep in mind that they were built by Auschwitz prisoners. We seek to document all that we discover to give recognition and pay respect to the strenuous work of the prisoners”, says Mirosław.

A single person air raid shelter in Monowice

Finally, we go to Monowice, nowadays on the grounds of the former Auschwitz III camp. We are shown a couple of single person air raid shelters which have still been preserved in the fields. We did not notice them the last time we went there, but now looking around we realise there are a lot of them around. Our group attracts attention from the people living in the area, and one farmer stops his car on the way home and starts talking to us. His name is Stanisław and his family has lived in Monowice for generations. Stanisław’s father used to transport dead corpses to the ovens  in Birkenau, with horse carriages. He points to us a garden of his neighbour where one of the single person shelters is standing in between the garage and the house.

New house with an old bunker on its left side

We finish in front of a large overground bunker which, Mirosław explains, has been preserved in the best condition because it was used as the seat of Civil Protection Unit of the Oświęcim Chemical Plant (original name: Obrona Cywilna Zakładów Chemicznych Oświęcim) since after the war until very recently. There is even central heating system inside, Piotr adds. A promise is given to us that another time we will be able to enter, someone has a friend who can get the keys to go in.

Mirosław ends his fascinating narration with describing to us a vision of an exhibition he dreams about. He tells us how he would like that a museum of IG Farben and Oświęcim under occupation would be created in this bunker: “it is ideally preserved and could be easily used as a museum. I would be so happy to work on a project to develop this with the local government”. “It might be, however, that to build the new ring road which is to run nearby this bunker will be destroyed” someone else adds. “But we hope that this will not happen, this place has such a potential to become a local museum of the recent past, we could tell the story of the bunkers there too…” It is curious whether ideas like this one will be considered by the municipality and regional government while developing the local infrastructure.

We ended our morning hunting for bunkers with a short walk around bomb craters, overhearing a last story: “My grandmother wanted to hide here for Soviet bombs, but SS men told her to go home because the bunker was only for Germans. Later on that day this bunker was completely destroyed, but she survived the attack in her house”, a young man tells us emotionally. We realise that for these sturdy men it is not only ‘cool’ to dig for bunkers, there are also a lot of hidden emotions and stories.

What is really ‘original’ in Oswiecim?

When talking to Oswiecim’s inhabitants, almost all of them attribute a very specific meaning to the word ‘original’. For them a piece that is ‘original’, is something that has survived from the period of Nazi occupation. In the last months people have showed me original fences, original bunkers, and even original railways. But no one had ever directed my attention to the ‘original’ medieval castle in Oswiecim’s center, or the ‘original’ communist living infrastructures at the outskirts of the town. The label of ‘originality’ seems to be something that is solely designed for artefacts from the period between 1939-1945. Working on ‘Living in Auschwitz’ and talking to locals every day has made me internalize this language of originality.

But my encounter with Ilona and Grzegorz made me realize that there is more ‘original’ in Oswiecim. For Ilona and Grzegorz ‘original’ means something else. Ilona’s and Grzegorz’s interest in Oswiecim is archeological, and more precisely focusing on Antiquity and Early Middle Ages. My first thought was one of stereotypical astonishment: ‘Roman Caesars in Auschwitz?’

Ilona explained me that today’s Oswiecim/Auschwitz has been situated just outside the Roman Empire. It was a crossing point for amber trade between Germanic tribes and the Roman empire. She told me that there are lots of potentially interesting Late Antique archeological sights in Oswiecim, but none of them attracts much attention.

Grzegorz’s interest lays in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Slavic invasions, and the emergence of the town of Oswiecim. ‘Oswiecim has 800 rich years of history’, he says, ‘but everyone focuses only on the years of Nazi occupation.’

Ilona and Grzegorz gave us an ‘archeological’ tour through Oswiecim pointing at ‘original’, natural elevations from the river Sola protecting the town of Oswiecim, and ‘original’ foundations of the Domenican monastery. Being asked about the tourist potential of these ancient remainders, Ilona and Grzegorz answered that the town is not doing enough to promote its sights and to attract people: ‘For a place that attracts more than a million tourists a year, one small brochure on the town’s history does not suffice’.

After our walk through old Oswiecim, I was truly impressed: ‘Oswiecim is actually beautiful, isn’t it?’. I received a genuine smile in return: ‘I am happy you see it’, Gregorz said.

Oswiecim’s difficulties with building bridges

In Bar Orchidea, a few old men stare at the dust twinkling in the afternoon light. Most of them would stand up every half an hour to order another Warka, a Polish beer. In the meantime, the world is very much alive on the tv that is permanently playing in the corner, but on which only half an eye is directed. Bar Orchidea is the perfect place to lose time.

Bar Orchidea

We are meeting its owner: Henryk Grzybek. Grzybek is an engaged person in Oswiecim’s political life. He used to be a member of the town council for a few years, and was a presidency candidate in Oswiecim’s last elections in November 2014 (obtaining 3 percent of the votes). Asking him about the current state of living in Oswiecim, Grzybek started listing the town’s problems and the frustrations of its inhabitants.

‘If this place is so important for the whole world, then building a bridge and a ringroad, which would cost maybe 500 million Polish zlotys (125 million euros) -the Polish state would not go bankrupt-, is not so hard’, Grzybek sets off explaining the city’s road infrastructure problem. The different districts of Oswiecim are separated by the Soła river. The two bridges crossing the river direct bypassing traffic straight into the town’s center causing large traffic jams. A ringroad and a third bridge would solve the issue, but then this bridge and ringroad would be built close to the Auschwitz museum, disturbing the museum’s ‘peace’.

When there is an important personality visiting Auschwitz, the traffic gets even worse: ‘If there would be a ringroad, the inhabitants will not eternally suffer from having the roads closed. The inhabitants are tired with this kind of life, every time there is someone coming here there are always obstructions on the roads’, Grzybek complains. According to Grzybek, these road problems also keep tourists away from the town: ‘It takes them an hour to go from the camp to the town, so they rather go straight to Krakow’, he says with a sense of exaggeration.

Asking Grzybek on the impact of bad infrastructure on the town’s economy, he sketches a dark image: ‘In Oswiecim there have been a lot of businesses and factories, tobacco industry, tanneries, creamery; and at present there is nothing, apart from that one large chemical factory. So people have no jobs in Oswiecim. Oswiecim’s population was 45,000 in the early eighties, now it is 39,000. That tells you everything’, he finishes his depressing tale.

We checked the numbers Grzybek mentioned with the current municipality government, which confirmed the numbers but added that the population in neighbouring villages has increased. This would, according to the municipality government, be a sign of middle class formation: people build their houses outside of the center, to have more space for living.

The municipality government admitted the trouble finding a concrete plan and budget for the ringroad. But apart from the ringroad and bridge, the government informed us about another bridge project in which a lot of time and money will be invested: an artwork bridge connecting the Auschwitz museum and the center of Oswiecim, making it attractive for tourists to go to the town’s center from the Auschwitz museum. The city is currently applying for grants to build this bridge. With the strong local demand for a ringroad and bridge for cars, building this new pedestrian bridge divides the community as it perceived by some as yet another Auschwitz memorial.

Henryk Grzybek

Miroslaw Ganobis’ private history of Oswiecim/Auschwitz

Miroslaw Ganobis is waiting for us, peeking out of his the window of his first floor apartment in the Oswiecim’s Chemikow housing district: ‘I am coming downstairs, wait for me’. Ganobis is a window installer, but also passionate collector of objects from Oswiecim, both from the pre-war period as well as from the war time. The objects are found by Ganobis himself on attics of old buildings, accidentally discovered in gardens or basements, either bought from or donated by the owners or their descendants. He has installed the objects in two rooms in the basement of his building.

‘Please sit down, if you dare’, Ganobis says pointing at an old, black office chair. After being seated, he informs me about the history of the chair: ‘This is Hans Koch’s office chair, he was one of the officers who introduced Zyklon B in the gas chambers’. I stood up for a second and looked at the chair, feeling a bit uncomfortable. ‘Don’t worry, lots of people have been sitting on it’, Ganobis reassured me, as if the number of people who were sitting on this chair made up for the chair’s history.

Ganobis explains me how each object has a double story: the history of the object itself, and story of how Ganobis found it. A road sign from the period of Nazi occupation indicating ‘Auschwitz, Kreis Bielitz’, sticks to the wall. ‘The sign was used by people after the war to construct a beehive’, Ganobis explains, ‘when I was repairing their windows, I noticed it and asked if I could have it. They gave it to me without any problem’.

Among the hundreds objects Ganobis has in these 2 small rooms are a striped uniform of an Auschwitz prisoner (bought from the son of a survivor), a few dozens of Vodka bottles dating from between 1880 and 1940 produced by the Jewish Haberfeld factory in Oswiecim, a cup from IG Farben, a chess set from an Auschwitz prisoner. Ganobis presents all of it with a sense of pride. Possessing an original Auschwitz uniform is an achievement it seems, be it somehow lugubrious.

Ganobis takes a German map from a shelf, dated 1944. ‘There were about 150 bunkers around Oswiecim’, he says, ‘most of them are hard to find.’ Apart from collecting old objects from Oswiecim, Ganobis’ second hobby is ‘bunker digging’. Every Saturday morning he meets with friends to search for the old bunkers following the map from 1944. This sometimes includes digging in the ground: ‘We are happy when we find a piece of concrete at the end of the day.’ ‘It is a normal hobby, just like watching football’ Ganobis says with a smile. As many other locals, also Ganobis has his own thoughts on how to attract tourists to the town: ‘The road of bunkers, once all dug up, could be a great attraction for tourists.’

For who wants to visit Miroslaw Ganobis ‘private museum’, he would be happy to guide you. Contact him on this e-mail address: mirren@poczta.onet.pl.

UPDATED – Anti-semitic graffiti in Birkenau’s ‘Kartoffelbaracken’

Out of the 1.1 million Auschwitz prisoners, 500,000 arrived on the so called ‘Judenrampe’, a ramp just a few hundred meters out of the contemporary Birkenau museum camp site. On the place today, a small memorial site is erected: a cattle wagon, referring back to the deportation is placed on the tracks. Although presented as a real cattle wagon dating from the 1940’s, Auschwitz historian Michael Challoner told us that it is actually a French replica from the 1960’s. He said that the rail tracks on which the replica stands are new, the real Judenrampe was located one hundred meters further. But not the allegedly staged nature of this place is the most prominent. Rather, its profanity is more striking. Opposite of the cattle wagon, children play in the garden, and the road to the Judenrampe memorial seems to be a popular path for jogging.

Cattle wagon at the Judenrampe memorial

But for me, the goosebumps came only later. Closer to the Birkenau museum, we find the ‘Kartoffelbaracken’, barracks used for the storage of food of the Birkenau camps. The barracks are just outside the museum and are now decaying ruins, covered with graffiti. Most of these graffiti are innocent, but one was particularly painful. It was relatively new, in dark red, and depicted gallows with the Star of David hanging on it. Under it is written in Polish: ‘chciwość (…)srael’. The first letter of the second word is unreadable, but it is quite clear what is means: ‘greed Israel’.

Anti-semitic graffiti in Birkenau’s Kartoffelbaracken

Being in Poland, a confrontation with anti-Semitic graffiti does not come as a surprise, but finding such a repulsive message on physical remains of the Holocaust is probably the biggest harm you can do the place’s history and its victims. And no one seems to care. The message is visible to everyone who wants to see it, no one has removed it. Finding anti-semitic graffiti on the wall of a former Birkenau barrack also touches a paradox of material Holocaust heritage in Oswiecim. What is included in the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum is highly protected, controlled and conserved, but what is just outside is exposed and accessible by anyone and consequently also prone to vandalism, including anti-semitism. A middle way between the control of the museum and the desertion outside seems to be hard to find. UPDATE: In the meantime, the team of the local Wójt (president of the villages around Oswiecim) has painted over the graffiti. After doing more investigations in the buildings, the team discovered 3 other graffiti paintings that had to be removed.

Remainders of the Kartoffelbaracken

Children from Birkenau

When I was twelve, my mother told me to read Anne Frank’s diary, as an exercise in empathy. She thought it was an experience that I had to go through.

In the Belgian middle class neighborhoods in which I grew up, telling your children about what happened during the Holocaust, or not telling your children what had happened, was a choice you could make as a parent. The second option does not exist when you raise your children in the town of Brzezinka (Birkenau). Children there are constantly confronted with the view on the ‘Gate of Death’ and the groups of tourists driving through their streets. Parents don’t have the choice to start from a white page and give their children Anne Frank to read, or can’t decide not to tell their children in order not to awake the child’s imagination with dramatic and blood-curdling stories.

We met Agatha Kowal, head of the primary school in Brzezinka. Taking a seat in Agata’s office, one instantly recognizes the positive energy radiating from a person with a true passion for her job. ‘I am here from the early morning until the late evening, without regret’, Agata sets off, adding to this a bit later that ‘If I come home at night, my 24 years old daughter tells me not to complain too much, “just think about the problems people had in here during the war”. It helps to see things in perspective’, she adds with a smile.

Agata Kowal grew up in Babice, a district of Oswiecim. She was raised hearing stories from her parents and grandparents: ‘My grandmother had heard the music from the orchestra in the concentration camp every day. Decades after the war she still turned off the radio every time she heard a tango milonga. The memory of what this music was hiding was still too heavy to carry.’ When she was 9, Agata went to visit the camp in Birkenau, just a few kilometers from her house, for the first time. ‘That was the seventies, there were no tourists yet. I remember I was sitting in one of the Birkenau barracks, and the vivid images from what I have seen on TV, read about and heard from my parents all started coming back to my head at once. I covered my eyes and started shouting.’ Asking her how she managed to cope with this very close and permanent memory of the Holocaust, Agate answered: ‘Once with my parents and I were biking towards Birkenau and when I saw we are going this direction I turned my bike back and very vigorously protested saying I do not want to pass by this place (the Birkenau camp). When years passed by and I grew older, I got used to people passing away. I familiarized with death, and could live with the presence of Birkenau.’

32 years ago, Agata started teaching in the primary school in Brzezinka. The school was founded in 1969. The roots of the school are still visible in its emblem: a reversed red triangle with a capitalized P in the middle, the symbol Polish political prisoners had to wear in the camp. The fact that such a symbol of subordination was turned into the emblem of a school promoting just the opposite of what the reversed red triangle means, was particularly striking.

Asking Agata what was driving her to do this job, she answered that she had to teach ‘what happened here’, to avoid it from happening again somewhere else. I asked her about the difference between Holocaust education in ‘the West’ and Holocaust in Brzezinka. Going to school in Brzezinka entails much more than a reference to the Holocaust in fourth grade of high school, and an eventual school trip to a Nazi concentration camp. ‘With the six to seven years old students I am going to the Birkenau camp every November 1st’, Agata answered. ‘On November 1^st we remember our dead family members. But in the classroom I always ask the children how they would feel if they knew that no one would remember them after they had died. After this conversation we go to the camp and leave flowers at the monument, to remember those who are forgotten. Most of the children are really impressed, quiet and thoughtful’.

The school still has a strong contact with the children who survived the camp, who are now in their 80’s and 90’s. Every year, the survivors come to the school and tell the older children their stories. ‘Despite these narratives of horror, I see lots of smiles around me on these days. It is great that the younger generation, born after communism, can smile again.’ Asking her about how she will teach the topic when, after the deaths of the witnesses, these face-to-face encounters will be impossible, she lift her shoulders: ‘I don’t know. It will certainly be more difficult to make these stories more concrete. I hope showing videos can help us out.’

Classroom of memory in the school

Agata told me that teaching the Holocaust in the way the school does it is, is generally well received by children and parents, but that especially the rise of violent video games has made the job more difficult: ‘Once we had a pupil who showed not to be sensitive to what we talked about it in class. “I play videogames, war is cool”, he said. This case made me touch the borders of what is acceptable for teachers to do. I spent a day in a room with the child. When the bell rang for lunch, he asked me if he could go out to have food. I answered that it is war, there is no food. An hour later he wanted to go out playing with his friends, but I told him that it is war, he has no friends. Finally, he wanted to call his mother, but I looked him in the eyes and said: “It is war, you have no mother”. I asked him if he still thought war was cool, he told me he understood better now.’

I left the school impressed, shocked and with lots of questions. Is Agata exaggerating in her endeavor? Or maybe this is precisely the way to teach children empathy, to make them thoughtful and open to the suffering of others?

Auto Serwis in Monowitz

The Auschwitz-complex consisted of 3 main camps (Auschwitz I, Birkenau, and Monowitz) and more than 45 subcamps in and around the town of Oswiecim. Out of the 3 main camps, Auschwitz I and Birkenau have been rebuilt after 1944, as museums and places of commemoration. Monowitz, which functioned as a labor camp and held about 12,000 prisoners, has been largely forgotten by authorities after the war. But the camp itself is well documented, especially because of large accounts of testimony from survivors, including the author Primo Levi. Prisoners in the Monowitz camp were used as slave laborers in the nearby IG Farben chemical factory. Today’s Monowice is a small hamlet in the shadow of the still existing chemical factory, just five kilometers east of Oswiecim.

Getting to Monowice on Saturday afternoon was less easy than we had expected. It had snowed in the night, which made the roads incredibly slippery. And we had searched for Monowice on the map, but could only vaguely guess where it could be.

Arriving at the place, we found only a few small streets with newly built houses. At first hand, there was nothing that reminded us of the fact that we were in what was Auschwitz III, as Monowitz is called today: no museum, no signs, no tourists, no pizzerias. We parked the car at the end of a dead-end street, just in front of a somewhat dilapidated building functioning as Auto Serwis. Two old men and a younger guy were busy closing their business for the day. Our first question, ‘Dzien Dobry, where can we find the barracks?’, should have scarred them. The answer we received was quite dismissive: ‘If you want to take good pictures, go to Brzezinka (Birkenau)’. I felt like an intruder in people’s private lives, disturbing their comfort while reminding them of the history of their place.

After a short exchange, we were told that the people of Monowice still use the barracks from the former camp. An older man showed us around. The red brick building in decay next to his Auto Serwis working place, was a former SS barrack of the camp. It has been abandoned now, but it was occupied by homeless people until recently.

A swing in front of a former barack.

Nature is gaining space in the former camp.

The man asks us to follow him by car through the small streets of Monowice, leading us to another barrack. ‘It is now used as a barn for the farm next to it’, he said.

Barack functioning as barn

The man decided not to give us much time at the barn, and lead us to a concrete building just outside the hamlet. ‘This is the main SS bunker, take a look’. Judging from the amount of empty Wodka bottles, and the swearwords written in graffiti on the walls, the SS bunker functions as a popular place to gather for alcohol and share frustration.

SS bunker

Monowice seemed to have swallowed Monowitz, the former Auschwitz III of which we know so many horrible stories. Whereas Auschwitz I and Birkenau are largely visited sites, Monowice/Monowitz seems to be forgotten.