The Future of Auschwitz = ?

Blogging should be as much about engaging with other’s thoughts as it is about enforcing your own on the world… so here I go. A fellow public historian Elle spoke of her ‘07 visit to Auschwitz, others’ thoughts on the existence of it, the practice of visiting them on school visits and the upsetting yet invaluable result of doing so, in her blog ISpyHistory today.

Elle discussed something that will rise in profile over the coming years: the debate over visiting Auschwitz I and Auschwitz-Birkenau II to witness to the silent horrors. Is there a debate? – I hear you, why wouldn’t people visit to see what happened, not so long ago? It’s a bit more difficult though as it was outlined; there are those who think it should be compulsory for all, those who think the site shouldn’t exist at all and those who deem its tourist destination label to be a deeply shameful title. They are angles increasingly worth thinking about as things tick by, and it made me think… (thank you Elle). Should we go? Should children go? Should it be preserved forever? Should it be allowed to stay? A question which won’t go away in my head most of all is –

What should happen to Auschwitz in the future?

6.4.03

6.4.03

To answer I have to (I don’t want to) think about my visit on 6th April, 2003. Auschwitz and nearby Auschwitz-Birkenau were sandwiched into a daytrip midweek during a school visit to Berlin, Krakow and Prague. Even at age 13, I knew the plans were pretty disorganised but I was eager to see such an important place and go on a rare ‘history’ themed adventure, so I signed up even though none of my close friends were going. I was nearly 14 when I stepped onto the other side of the barbed wire in Auschwitz, (recommended for 14+ only). I don’t recall even studying the Holocaust in great depth before or after in or out of lessons; on reflection – a huge issue. Some might say you can’t be prepared for Auschwitz, but I believe that some efforts could be made. You categorically shouldn’t just walk young minds in without some form of prep/ open discussion or support outside of typical adolescent classroom environments. Yes, the place is self-explanatory but the complex reactions to it are not.

The death wall.

I must have started this para twenty times and pressed delete – how do you even begin to describe Auschwitz? I just remember being a child before I went. After, I was sort of hollow. Was I actually there? I wished I could erase it from my thoughts, I didn’t eat in the days that followed and years later I had lengthy nightmares that I was an inmate. I remember… confusion over rooms which had displays and rooms that were uncomfortably empty… I remember train tracks alongside roads nearby, low ceilings and ice cold corridors inside, piles of bluish Zyklon B pellets, endless photos of faces, unsteady bunk beds, a chimney topped gas chamber lined with fingernail scratch marks that I was hesitant to enter for fear of being trapped… open ovens that were too close and a grey slab at one end of a courtyard that was peppered with bullet holes; the death wall. The rest was/ is a complete blur.

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Maybe I was too young. I do see Auschwitz as reminder of recent inhumanity organized by a developed civilization, in an advanced world. But as for the future… I don’t think the physical bricks on that land deserve attention. Continual discussion and education? Definitely. However I think there will soon come a time when nothing can be gained from going there, no further investigation, no connection and no closure. There are those who want to fund conservation for future generations to visit, but would these future visits mean that these future ancestors of ours will fully understand what happened there any more than we do? And wouldn’t preserving the structures be a completely repulsive dynamic of paying tribute to nazi criminality?… When I was 13 I exited the coach, clutched my backpack and childishly tried my best to understand the two Auschwitz sites. I tried to grow up ever so quickly, fast-track, somehow mature and wholly understand these atrocities so I could move on to understanding other things too. I recognised the famous railway arch at Auschwitz-Birkenau II and handed my disposable camera to a friend thinking, this place is important, I need a picture of me here, for the future.

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I hate the photo now. I don’t like to think of how many lives passed through where I stood. I even tried to understand the scale of what I saw at the top of the arch by taking as many photos as I could, – then when they were developed, I cello-taped them together so that I could show others at home a fraction of what I’d seen, so they could ‘understand’ too…

6.4.03

If you understand something, it’s done, finished, completed, free, left behind. Auschwitz cannot be understood; if it were, it would be whole, logical, solved. But it’s not. It’s knotted, locked and soaked for eternity, rusting in the shadowy eye of a constant storm. The torture inflicted there can never be eased and the pain felt there cannot be learnt. Visiting Auschwitz cannot help in ‘understanding’ the Holocaust anymore than visiting Ground Zero can help us understand 9/11. (Though I am loathed to compare historical events). I do see how visiting gives shock or context but I can’t consider my understanding of the Holocaust to be any better for visiting Auschwitz compared to someone that hasn’t.

Surely as time goes on we will realise that the very act of memorialisation is an incomplete, relentless process. Some problems can’t be solved by modernities, an app here or a hashtag there. Especially as time goes on, victims and witnesses will pass away. When all we have left of Auschwitz is rotting debris, societies cannot then continue to perfume it or rearrange it and expect to be any less confused, frustrated or nauseated by what they find. In my mind, the achingly haunting Auschwitz should eventually be laid to rest, left to decay; grow old naturally, the right it so cruelly denied to so many.