young american journalists in germany and poland international

I SSN 1899- 4407
PEOPLE
CULTURE
OŚWIĘCIM
HISTORY
YOUNG AMERICAN JOURNALISTS
IN GERMANY AND POLAND
INTERNATIONAL SUMMER ACADEMY
THE FACES OF JUSTICE
AUSCHWITZ ALBUM REVISITED
no. 31
July 2011
Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 31, July 2011
EDITORIAL BOARD:
EDITORIAL
Oś—Oświęcim, People,
History, Culture magazine
Last month, the Jewish Center hosted FASPE project participants, on
which we reported in the previous
issue of the monthly. Among them
were young journalists as well as
students from the Columbia University in New York. In this issue of Oś,
we are publishing their texts, which
were the effect of the ten-day program. To start with, we have chosen
general reflections and descriptions
of the entire visit, as well as a text
written by Eugene Kwibuka from
Rwanda, who, in a particularly emotional manner, wrote about Auschwitz in the context of the genocide
experienced within his own country.
Editor:
Paweł Sawicki
Editorial secretary:
Agnieszka Juskowiak-Sawicka
Editorial board:
Bartosz Bartyzel
Wiktor Boberek
Jarek Mensfelt
Olga Onyszkiewicz
Jadwiga Pinderska-Lech
Artur Szyndler
Columnist:
Mirosław Ganobis
Design and layout:
Agnieszka Matuła, Grafikon
Translations:
David R. Kennedy
Proofreading:
Beata Kłos
Cover:
Rebecca Lim
Photographer:
Paweł Sawicki
On the Museum pages, you will
find an article about, among others,
eighteen original letters written in
the concentration camp that were
donated to the Museum Archive.
Their authors were Rodryg Romer,
his daughter Elżbieta, and her fiancé
Maksymilian Lohman, who were imprisoned in Auschwitz in 1943. Family members of the former prisoners
donated these priceless heirlooms.
Within this Oś, we also summarize
the first International Summer Academy, which was prepared for teachers from abroad by the International
Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust; as well as
report on a visit to the Memorial
Site by members of the International
Council of Christians and Jews.
Site? Gerhard Hausmann, a lecturer
at this German institution, answers
this question in an interview in this
Oś.
We also invite you to visit the exhibition at the International Youth
Meeting Center. For the first time
in Poland, the works of Pat Mercer
Hutchens are on display. In total this
includes twenty-five reproductions
of oil paintings, which are an artistic and literary interpretation from
the infamous Auschwitz Album. We
also encourage you to take a close
look at the second part of the guideFor the third time, a group of stu- book created by the Jewish Center
dents attending the School of Man- dealing with the Jewish history of
agement of Public Organizations of Oświęcim.
North Rhine-Westphalia, have come
to Oświęcim on a study visit. Why
Paweł Sawicki
Editor-in-chief
is it so important for future Geros@auschwitz.org.pl
man officials to visit the Memorial
A GALLERY
OF THE 20TH CENTURY
PUBLISHER:
Auschwitz-Birkenau
State Museum
Here is one, short artistic and
biographically based subject! Recently, I watched, notably, not the
first time a film on a public television channel... broadcast on by a
paid provider, a Soviet-Japanese
film, which was made in 1975,
entitled Dersu Uzala that was directed by the Japanese maestro
Akira Kurosawa, who was awarded an Oscar! Today I am also
once again reading the book by
Vladimir Arsenyev, Along the Ussury Land, that forms the basis of
the screenplay for the riveting film.
Here in Poland, it was published
in the darkest period of the Stalinist era: in 1951! However, since
it tells the story about the start of
the twentieth century, set during
the years 1902-1907, it is distant,
as a ballad about travel and adventures, from the terrible reality of
that time.
www.auschwitz.org.pl
PARTNERS:
Jewish
Center
www.ajcf.pl
Center for Dialogue
and Prayer
Foundation
www.centrum-dialogu.oswiecim.pl
International Youth
Meeting Center
www.mdsm.pl
IN COOPERATION
WITH:
Siberia, the Ussury Country, as
well as borderlands of Russia and
China. Hunters and trappers, robbers and villains, Siberian taiga, nature, people and animals. A great
and true friendship! Attempts at
meeting, culminating in tragedy,
modernity mixed with age-old
customs, and the trapper culture.
A superb film that is luckily recognized and honored as such! And its
ending, I view in a psychological
and stylistic context together with
the last scenes ofthe film Amadeus
by Miloš Forman!
Kasztelania
www.kasztelania.pl
www.pwsz-oswiecim.pl
i i
l
Editorial address:
„Oś – Oświęcim, Ludzie,
Historia, Kultura”
Państwowe Muzeum
Auschwitz-Birkenau
ul. Więźniów Oświęcimia 20
32-603 Oświęcim
e-mail: os@auschwitz.org.pl
Photo: Andrzej Winogrodzki
State Higher
Vocational School
ol
in Oświęcim
The book by Władimir K. Arseniew Along the Ussury Land,
that was the basis for the Kurosawa movi Dersu Uzala
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Andrzej Winogrodzki
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Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 31, July 2011
WE ARE HERE TOGETHER
M
embers of the International Council of Christians and Jews visited the Auschwitz Memorial for the first
time in the history of the organization. On July 5, the group of more than a hundred people from 27 countries walked the Remembrance Trail on the grounds of the German Nazi Concentration and Extermination
Camp Auschwitz II-Birkenau, which was marked by four symbolic stations. The visit to the Memorial was part of
the three-day Council meeting, held in Cracow this year under the title Religion and Ideology: Polish Perspectives on
the Future.
The participants, Jews and
Christians of various denominations, walked from
the main gate and along the
camp ramp (unloading platform) to the crematorium
ruins—the road along which
deported Jews were once led
to death in the gas chambers.
At the foot of the memorial
to the victims in Birkenau a
about Auschwitz and the
Holocaust at the AuschwitzBirkenau State Museum and
the Center for Dialogue and
Prayer, which played host to
members of the Council.
The main ICCJ sessions were
held in Cracow. The outstanding role of John Paul II
in the Polish-Jewish dialogue
was emphasized during the
Photo: CDPF
it possible to build relations
of trust. I see improvement
in this dialogue because Poland is no longer associated
only with Auschwitz, but is
also seen as the place where
the Polish Jews lived,” said
Krajewski.
Referring to Dialogue of Tasks
for a New Century, a document issued by the Conference of the Polish Episcopate, Archbishop Stanisław
“We have come here today from different
Gądecki of Poznań said that
milieus, united in a desire to render our
there is still too little shaping
respects to the victims and in awareness of the of responsible attitudes in reobligation to work for a better future in which lation to Jews in homilies and
the teaching of the catechism.
we can live together as brothers and sisters.”
“We feel uneasy about the
Participants of the International Council recurrence, time after time,
of signs of associating Jews
of Christians and Jews meeting with all the worst things,”
Members of the Council at the Remembrance Trail
joint appeal was issued: “We
have come here today from
different milieus, united in a
desire to render our respects
to the victims and in awareness of the obligation to work
for a better future in which
we can live together as brothers and sisters.”
After the Jewish prayer of
mourning, El Male Rachamim,
and the saying of the Kaddish, the participants lighted
candles in silence.
Guests from 27 countries including Palestine and Saudi
Arabia toured the grounds
of the former Auschwitz
German camp, visited the
Franciscan monastery in
Harmęże with its Labyrinths of Memory exhibition
by former Auschwitz prisoner Marian Kołodziej, and
took part in workshops and
learned about the educational work of institutions
gathered around the Memorial including the International Center for Education
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“Poland has become the leader among
countries trying to respond to a troubled
history, and this makes it possible to build
relations of trust. I see improvement in this
dialogue because Poland is no longer
associated only with Auschwitz, but is also
seen as the place where the Polish Jews lived.”
Prof. Stanisław Krajewski, philosopher and co-chairman
of the Polish Council of Christians and Jews
meetings. There was also
discussion of the shaping
among the younger generation of responsible attitudes
in relation to Jews. Professor
Stanisław Krajewski, a philosopher and co-chairman of
the Polish Council of Christians and Jews, stated that
the rise in the number of titles on Jewish issues from
Catholic publishers was due
to the position taken by John
Paul II. “Poland has become
the leader among countries
trying to respond to a troubled history, and this makes
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said Gądecki. “Such a harmful pattern remains rooted
in the mentality of certain
parts of the public and, what
is worse, is passed on from
generation to generation.”
Participants in the three-day
conference included Rabbi
David Rosen of Israel, Dr.
Philip Cunningham of the
United States, Father Professor Hans Herman Henrix of Germany, two former
chairman of the Polish Episcopate Commission for Dialogue with Judaism, Archbishop Henryk Muszyński
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THE STATIONS
OF THE REMEMBRANCE TRAIL
IN BIRKENAU
Station I – The Righteous was dedicated to the memory
of those who remained outside the camp: family and
friends, and also people indifferent to the fate of the prisoners, and perpetrators. Above all, however, there was
discussion in this place of the people who risked their
lives to save others—the Righteous among the Nations of
the World. There was a reading from the memoirs of
Merka Szewach, a former Auschwitz prisoner who witnessed how an Oświęcim resident named Janek risked
his life to help her and other people imprisoned in the
camp.
Station II – The Persecutors, located at the first guard
tower, is a reminder of those who caused the killing and
suffering. Father Manfred Deselaers, a German priest
who has worked at the Center for Dialogue and Prayer
for many years, bore extraordinary witness here: “Who
are those people who lost all humanity? And why did
this happen? They came from Germany. I am a German.
The majority of them were baptized. I am a Catholic
priest. I do not bear personal guilt, but what happened
here and the fact that my people perpetrated it fills me
with sadness. I feel the deep wound that we inflicted on
others, on you and your families, the relations between
us and other peoples, and I am deeply, deeply sorry.
I have hope in the depths of my heart and I wish to beg
you for the renewal of relations that are human, friendly,
and full of trust and love.”
Station III – The Prisoners of the Camp, located halfway along the ramp, was intended to serve as a reminder
of all the prisoners in the camp: Jews from all over the
world, Poles, Roma and Sinti, Soviet POWs, and many
others. The memoirs of Primo Levi were quoted here,
and there was a citation that the words spoken by John
Paul II during his visit to the site of the camp in 1979,
when he said: “In this place of terrible suffering, which
brought death to four million people from various nations, Father Maximilian Kolbe won a spiritual victory
similar to the victory of Christ Himself, giving himself
over voluntarily to death in the starvation bunker—for
his brother.” The reflection at this station concluded with
the prayer Our Father.
Station IV – The Shoah, located between the ruins of
the crematoria, recalled the approximately 900,000 victims who were brought to Auschwitz-Birkenau and
taken straight to the gas chambers. There was a reading
from the memoirs of Salmen Levental, a member of the
Sonderkommando, the group of prisoners forced by the
Germans to operate the crematoria and gas chambers in
Auschwitz.
and Archbishop Stanisław
Gądecki, and the current
chairman of the Committee,
Bishop Mieczysław Cisło.
The Faculty of International
and Political Studies at the
Jagiellonian University was
the co-organizer of the conference. Members of the Organizing Committee included both co-chairmen of the
Polish Council of Christians
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and Jews—Father Wiesław
Dawidowski and Professor
Stanisław Krajewski—and
Professor Zdzisław Mach of
the Jagiellonian University.
The first meeting of the international Council of Christians and Jews was held in
Warsaw in 1994.
ps (on the basis of the KAI)
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 31, July 2011
THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL
SUMMER ACADEMY
T
he first International Summer Academy concludes at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum: History,
Remembrance, and Education. More than twenty participants of various ages and occupations from around
the world took part in the project.
Photo: agju
Alicja Białecka, head of the
program section at the International Center for Education about Auschwitz
and the Holocaust and the
co-organizer of the project,
stated that the Academy
was a new direction in the
work of the Center, which
has previously concentrated more on training specific
groups of educators as part
of its cooperation with institutions like the Council of
Europe or the Yad Vashem
Memorial Institute in Israel.
“The seminar is something
completely new in our educational work. It is targeted
at English-speaking individuals. Until now, these
people have not had the option of being taught directly
by us at the Education Center on the grounds of the Memorial,” said Białecka.
José Velasco of Arizona
is on his third trip to the
Auschwitz Museum. He
said that he came the first
time as an ordinary tourist and the second time in
a student group. This time,
he came to prepare himself
better for imparting the history of Auschwitz to new
groups of young people
with whom he plans to return in the near future.
“My first trip to Auschwitz was like gazing into
the past. However, I also
Participants of the Summer Academy welcomed by Alicja Białecka, head of the ICEAH Program Section
are the same,” said Velasco.
For Nora Fischbach-Hirshbein of Venezuela, the
Academy was a powerful
experience. During the Holocaust, the German Nazis
murdered many members
of her family, who came
from Kalisz and Koźminek,
Poland. Her grandfather, a
former Auschwitz prisoner,
never talked with her about
his wartime experiences.
“Even as a small child I saw
the number that he had tattooed on his arm. That’s
why it was so important
for me to take part in this
seminar, in order to understand the origins of my own
family history better and
learn about what happened
here,” she said. While noting the high standard of the
lectures and the commitment of the organizers, she
also stressed that attending the Academy helped
her overcome the negative
feelings about Poles that
she acquired in her family
home. “Now I’m a different
person. All of you here are
Poles and I see the effort you
put into maintaining this
place and preserving the
Photo: agju
learned that we cannot
limit ourselves to this. What
once happened here can
also make us able to prevent similar events now.
The roots of Auschwitz lie
in intolerance and we really should teach our young
people, in particular, to be
tolerant of others. In Arizona we have similar cases
where particular groups are
stigmatized, for example
immigrants from Mexico
who come to Arizona and
become scapegoats. The
scale is different, of course,
but the principles at work
memory. I am very grateful
to you for this. I want to cry
when I utter this,” she said
with emotion. “I want to
thank you all and I do not
have the words to express
what I feel.”
Aside from in-depth tours
of the former German Nazi
concentration camp, the
Academy schedule also included a series of lectures
and discussions on subjects
connected with Auschwitz
and its postwar history,
Polish-German
relations
during the war, and the educational challenges facing
the Auschwitz Museum, the
world’s best known Memorial site and the symbol of
the Holocaust, in the future.
Alicja Białecka confirmed
that the program will be
continued. “This first International Summer Academy
is only the beginning,” she
said. “What is happening at
this moment demonstrates
the necessity of continuing
this kind of work. We will
try to organize the Summer Academy each year.
The positive reactions by
the participants seem to
indicate that the program
we put together is optimal:
a well balanced combination of an encounter with
the original historical place,
with the memorial, and
with the Museum as an institution, along with the
knowledge shared by the
staff of this institution and
the invited guests.”
jarmen
Participants of the Summer Academy visiting the site of the former Auschwitz I camp
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Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 31, July 2011
ORIGINAL CONCENTRATION CAMP LETTERS
WRITTEN BY PRISONERS HAVE BEEN
PRESENTED TO THE AUSCHWITZ MEMORIAL
SITE ARCHIVES
T
he Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Archives have just received a collection of eighteen original letters written
in the Camp. Their authors—Rodryg Romer, his daughter Elżbieta, and her fiancé Maksymilian Lohman—were
imprisoned in the camp in 1943 for working within the underground. The letters—precious family heirlooms—
were presented to Rafał Pióro, a deputy-director of the Museum, by members of the former prisoners’ family: Barbara
Romer-Kukulska as well as Aleksandra, Paweł, and Rafał Lohman.
as well as providing more
knowledge about the fate of
Auschwitz prisoners. Thanks
to the descriptions of individuals and events by the authors, which can be linked to
certain known incidents and
information that has been
passed down in the family
history, it is also possible to
do a deeper historical analysis, as well as add enrichment
to the emotional layer.
Elżbieta Romer left her mark
in the memories of former
prisoners. She is mentioned
often in both the testimonies
of former prisoners, as well as
in books published about the
history of the concentration
camp. What is highlighted
there is her generosity and
selflessness in providing help
to fellow prisoners. After escaping from a column of prisoners during the evacuation,
AN APPEAL FOR THE DONATION
OF CAMP DOCUMENTS
We turn to former camp prisoners, their family members, and anyone who has in their
possession letters and post cards from Auschwitz, to make them available for the Museum Archives Department. In the case of documents the Museum already possesses,
in addition to protecting them against the process of decay, they have frequently been of
great help in providing families of former prisoners with information about the fate of
their loved ones.
Death March, she worked
as a nurse until the end of
the War. For her efforts,
the International Red Cross
bequeathed her with their
highest honor—the Florence
Nightingale Medal.
Even though her father suffered in the concentration
camp, he actively participated
in the process of Polish-German reconciliation. In 1965,
he translated a famous letter and message from Polish
Bishops to German Bishops.
The three family members
were sent to Auschwitz from
a prison in Tarnów, where
they found themselves after
having been arrested in Jasło.
This occurred as a result of
someone informing the occupational forces about clandestine meetings of the underground resistance movement
Photo: A-BSM
Krzysztof Antończyk, the
head of the Digital Repository
of the Auschwitz-Birkenau
State Museum said, “These
historical documents will be
stored in specially constructed and climate controlled
storage facilities, under the
professional oversight by archivists and conservators.”
They will be valuable additions, making the Museum’s
collection more complete
Handing over of the camp letters
that took place in a private
home. Maksymilian Lohman
was using an alias because he
was a fugitive from a prisoner
of war camp for Polish army
officers. Rodryg Romer was
an officer, a reservist, of the
Polish Army in Wadowice.
jarmen
ITALIAN EXHIBITION
AT THE AUSCHWITZ MUSEUM CLOSED
F
The
Italian
exhibition,
opened in 1980, was made
up of a ribbon of fabric in the
form of a spiral, hung with
paintings intended to represent various incidents from
the history of Italy in the
1930s and 1940s. The design-
ers stated that the final section was supposed to be an
apotheosis of positive colors
signifying victory over the
time of contempt and persecution.
This type of exhibition can
be categorized as art for art’s
sake and would be referred
to in a gallery of contemporary art as an installation
or performance. This type
of art is not presented on
the grounds of the former
Auschwitz camp, where
the educational dimension
NATIONAL EXHIBITIONS
Aside from the main exhibition, other permanent exhibitions on the grounds of the
Museum, referred to as “national,” are open to visitors. The idea dates back to 1946
and the original plans for the Museum. The first national exhibitions opened in the
1960s; they convey information about the Nazi German occupation of countries whose
citizens—Jews above all—died in Auschwitz.
The government of a given country designates institutions and organizations to prepare the contents and visual presentation of its exhibition. Over the years, most of
these exhibitions have been modernized or completely replaced. For more than a
decade, cooperation and consultation with the Auschwitz Museum have preceded
each opening of a national exhibition. At present, the Austrian, Belgian, Czech, Dutch,
French, Hungarian, Polish, Roma, Russian, and Slovakian exhibitions are open.
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Photo: pasa
rom July 2011, the Italian exhibition at the Auschwitz Memorial is closed to visitors. Not educational in any way, it failed to
meet the basic requirements for national exhibitions as set by the
International Auschwitz Council, which have been in force since the
1990s.
Italian Exhibition
is connected with remembrance, education, and making the younger generation
aware of the tragedy of the
victims of the Shoah and
the concentration camps, as
well as encouraging people
to reflect upon their personal
responsibility for the world
around them and its future.
The organizers of the closed
exhibition, the Italian ANED
association, have been reminded regularly over the
years about the fact that the
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exhibition did not conform
to the rules established by
the International Auschwitz
Council. Positive talks are
underway with the Italian
government about creating
a new narrative-historical exhibition in the future that will
meet the requirements set by
the International Auschwitz
Council and the AuschwitzBirkenau State Museum.
jarmen
International Youth Meeting Center
AUSCHWITZ ALBUM REVISITED
—AN EXHIBIT OF WORK
BY PAT MERCER HUTCHENS
wenty-five reproductions of oil paintings are artistic interpretations of photographs from the so-called, Lilly Jacob Album. These
particular photographs, which show the process of mass murder
at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, have become an inspiration for
the artist, whose work is being presented for the first time in Poland.
Photo: Pat Mercer Hutchens
exceptionally
emotional.
Hutchens focuses on a certain individual, often giving
them a name, so as to—as
she emphasized during the
exhibit’s
opening—make
the art more personal.
When we hear about, for
example, a tragedy or catastrophe, this information
creates short-lived empathy. However, when we
can identify with the victims, these feelings become
deeper and more tangible.
Within Pat Hutchens series,
the people immortalized on
the photographs from the
Auschwitz Album are telling their personal history—
of course, most of these are
artistic, and deeply spiritual
interpretations. They are
realistic, but not void of a
certain level of styling—in
Litte Pink Rose of Hungary
In a monolithic style and
range of warm earth tones,
the paintings focus on a
perspective, individual, or
group that the artist has
specifically chosen. This
technique, frequently deepened by a very personal
comment, makes the exhibit
Auschwitz Album Revisited
Hutchens focuses on a certain individual,
often giving them a name, so as to—as she
emphasized during the exhibit’s opening—
make the art more personal. When we hear
about, for example, a tragedy or catastrophe,
this information creates short-lived empathy.
However, when we can identify with the victims,
these feelings become deeper and more tangible.
Was born in Winnfield,
Louisiana. She is a graduate of several art schools
in the United States and in
Jerusalem; holds a Master’s
Degree in art as well as in
management and human
resource development; she
is also a doctor of theology from Louisiana Baptist
University. The main focuses of her scholarship are
languages, especially Levantine Arabic, and Jewish
Studies.
She has been a teacher of
painting, printing techniques, drawing, and the
fundamentals of design at
several schools: the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, George
Mason University, Northern Virginia Community
Colleg, Lord Fairfax College in Middletown, and the Dominion Theological Seminary. Not only is she the director, but also the director of Washington Artworks—an
organization that promotes art in the Washington metro
system. As a writer, poet, and photographer, Pat is the
editor of the column in a Washington magazine called,
The Jerusalem Connection.
Pat takes part in many charitable undertakings by donating her works to be auctioned as well as supports foundations which help children. She paints portraits and landscapes. Currently, she is working on a series of historical
paintings, dealing with events that occurred in northern
Virginia as well as within the Washington metro at the
beginning of the twentieth century. Her work has been
shown at solo and collective art exhibits in, among others,
New Orleans, Chicago, California, New York, Virginia,
Washington, and even in Israel and Russia.
a way, separating us from
them by a delicate fog—the
paintings show their subjects suspended in time:
they are already aware that
they have been pulled into
the horrifying machinery of
the Nazi system, however,
they still possess a glimmer
of hope. Nevertheless, the
paintings are accompanied
Photo: IYMC
Photo: IYMC
The Auschwitz Album is a set of extraordinary visual evidence about the process of mass
murder at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration and Death Camp. The photographs were
taken by SS men, most probably Ernst Hofmann and Bernhard Walter, either at the end of
May or the beginning of June in 1944. The photographs document the arrival of Hungarian
Jews from Carpathian Ruthenia as well as the entire process that prisoners were put through
after arrival at the Camp, until just before the moment of these individuals’ murder. This
visual documentation, whose initial purpose is unclear (but, it is assumed that this was to
be an official record for higher ranked officials), was discovered by Lilly Jacob in one of the
warehouses of the liberated Concentration Camp of Dora. There are a total of 193 photographs, on 56 pages (initially, there were more pictures, however, Lilly Jacob gave several of
them to those liberated from the Camp). This album was used for, among others, evidence
during the Frankfurt trial against Nazi criminals in the 1960s. In 1980, Lilly Jacob donated the
album to the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem.
PAT MERCER HUTCHENS
Vernissage
by the words of the artist,
who clearly explains to the
viewer about the individual’s eventual fate. Pat, whose
faith is deep, believes that
these crimes will not go unnoticed and their perpetrators will one-day face their
final judgment.
The exhibition was organized by the International
Youth Meeting Center in
association with The Jerusalem Connection Report in
Washington. It is an event
that runs in tandem with
the Jewish Culture Festival
in Cracow. The opening,
which was held on June 30,
included the attendance of
the artist and accompanying her, a sizable delegation
from the United States. The
exhibition was available for
viewing at the IYMC until
the end of July.
Joanna Klęczar
Vernissage
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Photo: Private archive
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Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 31, July 2011
International Youth Meeting Center
Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 31, July 2011
THE SECOND POLISH NATIONWIDE CONFERENCE
FACES OF JUSTICE. AUSCHWITZ AND THE HOLOKAUST AGAINST
THE BACKDROP OF GENOCIDE DURING THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
A
Photo: IYMC
lmost one hundred individuals from all over Poland took part in the conference Faces of Justice. Researchers,
teachers, and representatives of non-governmental organizations discussed the nature and consequences of the
crime of genocide in modern Europe, Africa, and Asia, as well as holding the perpetrators accountable. During
lectures and lively debates, it was discussed how to educate young people and adults today so that similar crimes are
not repeated.
tional Youth Meeting Center
in Oświęcim, the International Center for Education about
Auschwitz and the Holocaust
Taking part in the discussion panel toward the end of the conference were (from the left): Prof. Jacek Chrobaczyński,
head of the Modern Polish History Department at the Pedagogical University in Cracow, Piotr Łubiński, who was
in Afghanistan twice accompanying Polish soldiers, and Prof. Wiesław Kozub-Ciembroniewicz, President of the
Research Council of the Center for Holocaust Studies at the Jagiellonian University.
at the Auschwitz-Birkenau my, the Historical Institute at Studies at the Jagiellonian
State Museum, as well as the Pedagogical University, University.
(WB)
with the Oświęcim Acade- and the Center for Holocaust
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Why, after the Second World War
was there no genocide waged
against the Germans in Poland?—
sociologist Dr. Lech M. Nijakowski,
from the University of Warsaw,
attempted to provide an answer to
this question.
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Photo: agju
Photo: IYMC
Prof. Marek Kornat spoke about the legal and political understanding
of the notion of genocide by Raphael Lemkin,
and Dr. Edyta Gawron examined Amon Göth, commandant
of the Plaszow Concentration Camp and the first person
who was ever sentenced for the crimes of genocide.
The conference was opened by ICEAH director Krystyna Oleksy
and the MDSM Foundation Board chairman Dr. Alicja Bartuś
Photo: IYMC
tions are carried out, where
criminal medical experiments
are carried out, where torture
takes on its most heinous
form, where all human rights
are violated. It is high time
that at such a conference we
try to answer the question:
What is our opinion about
all this? WE, those who teach
about Auschwitz and the
Holocaust. How do we teach
so that it is not only passing
on facts about the past, but
education that helps build a
better tomorrow as well as a
better here and now.”
There is a plan to also publish a book this year, which
includes the most noteworthy
lectures and reflections from
the conference.
The conference was organized in cooperation with: the
Foundation for the Interna-
Photo: IYMC
Krystyna Oleksy, the director
of the International Center for
Education about Auschwitz
and the Holocaust, emphasized the need for universal
education of not only facts,
but also the causes and methods the crimes are carried out.
“Our institution accomplishes
these goals through intensive
work with teachers and educators, as well as young people from Poland and abroad,”
she said.
In turn, Alicja Bartuś, President of the Board of the International Youth Meeting
Center, noting the crimes
committed in the twentieth
century, talked about what
was going on in the modern
world: “There are still areas, where for years crimes
against humanity are perpetrated, where public execu-
Photo: agju
Among the participants there were: 5 professors, 20 PhDs and 14 doctoral students. Represented were the universities of Cracow, Warsaw, Wrocław, Poznań, Katowice, Lublin, Kielce, Sieradz, and Oświęcim.
Participants of the conference
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Jewish Center
Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 31, July 2011
OSHPITZIN. A GUIDE
B
elow we publish the second part of the first guide to the Jewish history of Oświęcim—Oshpitzin. This is
the result of ten years of historical research and collecting materials by the Auschwitz Jewish Center in
Oświęcim. The publication is accompanied by a www.oshpitzin.pl website which presents a virtual map
of the Jewish town, accounts of former residents of the town, videos, photos as well as lesson plans for educators. On the next page of the magazine you can find the city map with all the objects on it.
4
DRUKS
FAMILY HOUSE
The building at 4 Chopin Street belonged to the
Druks family. Built in the
1930s, it stood out from the
architecture of Oświęcim
as the only building inspired by the Bauhaus
Liebermann, co-owner of
Emil Kuźnicki Roofing Paper Factory (est. 1888), and
Józefina. Iro and Łucja had
two children, Adam (19301996) and Elinoar (b. 1935).
Shortly before the outbreak
of World War II, the Druks
and
Liebermanns
fled
Oświęcim, heading eastward finding themselves
in Palestine in 1942 after
many dramatic circumstances.
vent took place in 1899. The
church, built in neo-Gothic
style was partly destroyed
during WW2 and reconstructed afterwards.
MEZUZAH
(Hebrew:
doorframe) A piece of
parchment placed in a
decorative case on a doorframe. The parchment is
inscribed with handwritten
verses from Deuteronomy
6:4-9 and 11:13-21 which
is the Jewish declaration
of faith, Shema Israel (Hebrew: Hear O Israel the
Lord is Our God, the Lord
is One) and two associated
passages.
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Market day at the Main Square, c. 1935
MAIN MARKET
SQUARE
The
present
market
square was established in
Oświęcim during the 16th
century. In the same century, there was a storied
Druks Family House (first on the right), 1930’s
town hall and wooden
buildings in that area. Acstyle. It was also known for
cording to an 1867 docubeing the first house with
ment by J. N. Gątkowski,
a flat roof. Dr. Iro Druks
the square had a well,
was an attorney, a memthree-storied
tenement
CHURCH
ber of the town council,
houses, the monument
and a prominent member
of St. John of Nepomuk
OF OUR LADY
of the Zionist Revisionist
and the storied town hall,
OF SORROW
movement in Poland. His
which was the seat of lowife, Łucja Liebermann,
cal authorities until World
was born to a family of The construction and con- War II. During the war, the
Oświęcim
industrialists; secration of the church and main square was partly reher parents were Joachim the adjacent Seraphite con- built. In the central part,
a bunker was built (after
the war, it was made into
the shopping center and
recently demolished). Another sign of the rebuilding
are arcades, which still exist at the former Herz Hotel
building and at the building in Plebańska Street (opposite of the Internal Revenue Service). Before WWII,
the square was primarily a
place of economic activity
of Oświęcim’s merchants.
Farmers would come to
the market to sell their produce. In 1941, the square
was the main gathering
place for local Jews before
deportation to the ghettos
in Będzin, Chrzanów, and
Sosnowiec.
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Main Market Square, 1909
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Hasids at the Main Square, 1930’s, photo: Jerzy Wysocki
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Jewish Center
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Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 31, July 2011
7
HOUSE
OF RABBI ELIYAHU
BOMBACH
From 1900 to 1939 chief
Rabbis of Oświęcim were
members of the Bombach
Family. Osias Pinkas Bombach (1865-1921) was the
chief Rabbi of the town
until he passed away. He
lived with his family at the
Main Market Square (today,
no. 4) in the house of Jakób
Wulkan. At this residence a
regular minyan convened in
a small prayer room known
as bet din shtibl or Rabbi’s
shtibl. The place was also
used as Rabbi Bombach’s
yeshiva. Rabbi Bombach
was also the author of a
religious work titled Ohel
Yehoshua, published in 1901
in Drohobycz. Rabbi Bombach was succeeded by his
son Eliyahu (1883-1943),
who was previously a rab-
The page of Eliyahu Bombach’s
paper: Kuntres Maane Eliyahu
(Drohobycz, 1896).
It was presented during his
bar mitzvah
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bi in the nearby town of
Kęty. Eliyahu Bombach was
married to the daughter of
Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Saffrin. They lived at the Main
Market Square (today no.
10) Like his father Eliyahu
belonged to the Komarno
branch of Hasidism and
was also friends with Father
Skarbek. The latter was said
to be a guest at Rabbi Bombach’s daughter’s wedding.
In 1941, Eliyahu Bombach
was deported to the ghetto
in Sosnowiec and from there
to KL Auschwitz- Birkenau
where he was murdered.
RABBI (Hebrew: my master, teacher) – spiritual leader of the Jewish community,
learned in Halakhah (rabbinic law) and ordained in
a special ceremony called
smichah. Rabbis traditionally taught, supervised
kosher food, mediated
disputes and officiated at
lifecycle events. Rabbis are
usually hired by the Jewish
community.
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Army ceremony at the Main Market Square.
On the platform stand (L-R): Roman Mayzel, Mayor of Oświęcim,
Rabbi Eliyahu Bombach (marked) and Naftali Dawid Bochner,
President of Oświęcim Jewish Community, 1933
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Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 31, July 2011
FASPE: NEVER FORGET
WHAT WAS NEVER REPORTED
T
But I did reach one other
conclusion on my visit: “After Auschwitz, there must
be journalism.” After all, the
greatest stain on the practice of journalism in the 20th
century was its failure to adequately tell the story of the
Nazi crimes against the Jews.
The mere telling of that story
might have stopped—or at
least slowed—the Nazi murder machine.
I was in Eastern Europe
leading a group of journalism students on an exploration of the press during
the Shoah. The goal of the
program was to apply the
ethical lessons of that time to
contemporary situations, be
they genocide, totalitarian
regimes or corruption.
The program, administered
by the Museum of Jewish
Heritage in New York, is
called Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics, known in
short as FASPE. Journalists,
of course, were not the only
professionals who failed.
There are also FASPE programs for law and medical
students and for seminarians of all faiths.
Only three of the 12 students
in the journalism program
were Jewish. Among the
others were two students
from India and two from
Africa, all of whom had covered strife between ethnic
and religious groups. One
of the Africans was from
Rwanda, which experienced
a genocide of its own in the
1990s, when warring tribes
killed 800,000 people.
The Rwanda government,
military and the press incited and supported the murders, but the killings were
often carried out in a random fashion by marauding
mobs wielding machetes.
What struck my Rwandan
student, Eugene Kwibuka,
while at Auschwitz, was
the systematic apparatus of
death that the Nazis established: the roundups, the
deportations, the selections,
the gassing, the burning
and the harvesting of usable
items, like gold teeth and
hair.
He noted that victims were
treated not like human beings, but like a “product.”
“They were washed, killed
and destroyed without a
trace,” Kwibuka said. “A
brutal process.”
Before coming to Auschwitz, our group visited Berlin where among the stops
was the House of the Wannsee Conference, where, on
Jan. 20, 1942, 15 top Nazis
met to finalize plans for the
murder of all of Europe’s
11 million Jews. Wannsee
House is now an education
and documentation center,
and we met with one of its
splendid educators, Wolf
Kaiser.
Kaiser told us that when
Hitler came to power in
1933, one of his most strategic appointments was of
Joseph Goebbels as minister for propaganda. Goebbels snuffed out any independent press that existed
Photo: Suzanne Rozdeba
he philosopher Theodor Adorno famously said, “After Auschwitz, there can be no poetry.” While visiting
the site of the notorious death camp last week, I could see the truth of Adorno’s words. There is no beauty
in the barracks, the barbed wire and the crematoria. I saw no poetry in the mounds of hair and glasses and
shoes on display.
FASPE project participants at “Gazeta Wyborcza”
and put what remained in
the service of the regime.
In 1932, there were 4,700
newspapers in Germany;
by 1944, as the regime was
collapsing, fewer than 1,000
existed. None of them were
telling the truth, either about
the news or about the Nazi
defeats on the military fields.
The failures of the American
press to tell the story of the
Shoah have been richly documented by two scholars:
Deborah Lipstadt of Emory
University and Laurel Leff
of Northeastern University. The one exception to
the failure of the American
press was the work of the
Jewish press, which told the
story of the Holocaust even
though no one in power
seemed to listen. Evidence
of this is abundantly clear
with the recent opening of
the archives of the Jewish
Telegraphic Agency, which
are available online at www.
archive.jta.org.
Inevitably the discussion
among my journalism students turned to the use of
social media today, such as
Facebook and Twitter, and
how repressive regimes in
Egypt and Tunisia were
brought to their knees by
what amounted to “citizen
journalists” and their smartphones. The flip side of
these social media tools, my
students were quick to point
out, are that they have the
potential to distract us from
what is important by burying us in gossip. We don’t
always focus on genocides
taking place in Africa or
Asia today because we are
too busy updating our Facebook pages.
David Goldman, a lawyer
who is a friend but not a rel-
ative of mine, is the founder
and driving force behind
FASPE. He does not necessarily expect to stop despots or totalitarian regimes
through the program, but he
does hope to instill in participants an ethical sense that
will shape their professional
careers. “If we see terrible
wrongs, it is our job as professionals to do something
about that,” he said.
FASPE will be again be taking students from medical,
law, theology and journalism schools next summer.
To get more information
go to www.mjhnyc.org/
faspe. To see the work of
the journalism students,
go to www.faspe.info/journalism2011.
Ari L. Goldman is a professor
at the Columbia University
Graduate School of Journalism.
DAY TEN: WHAT STAYS WITH US
E
ach moment of this trip has been significant and impacting for us all, in different ways. Though our intellectual charge was the press’ response to the Holocaust, our 10 days together offered an emotional challenge of
equal import. We visited sites where humans crafted and executed unfathomable acts of hate and brutality.
We also saw how people grow and mend after tragedy.
Here is a small sample of the
most poignant moments for
our group. (These impressions were grabbed over the
last two days in quick interviews at meals and between
our ethics seminars held at
our hotel.)
Rodney said that he was
most impacted at the House
of Wannsee. Being there he
said, in the place where the
Holocaust was devised in
detail was striking. “Just imagining Nazis hovering over
these tables discussing this
plan… it’s incredible.”
The children’s shoes at
Auschwitz
overwhelmed
Becky. “Especially the boys
shoes without laces,” she
said, “because those are
the kind my son wears for
school everyday.” Becky
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also said she is fundamentally changed from this
trip and though she can’t
say how, she simply noted,
“things have moved in me.”
Eugene said: “I was struck
by the way people can be
systematically and strategically evil. The Holocaust
was committed in an organized way.” In contrast, he
said, was the chaos of the
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genocide in Rwanda. “The
way people would be taken
in a train and arrive like a
product. They were washed,
killed and destroyed without a trace. A brutal process.”
Gianna said that she saw a
quote in the House of Wannsee that really struck her.
“Someone was remembering how his father would
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never cut bread, but rip large
clumps because that’s what
he learned to do in a concentration camp. It’s small but
it shows the magnitude of
what something like that can
have on someone’s life—and
he’s one of the lucky ones.”
Laura remembered a scene
in the documentary, A Film
Unfinished, we watched before we left New York in
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Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 31, July 2011
which the Nazis are dumping bodies into a massive
grave. “I was struck because
it was real and that a person was filming it for Nazi
propaganda. I think it shut
me down emotionally for
the rest of the trip.”
Chitra said the photo exhibit
at Birkenau of birthdays,
weddings, and everyday preHolocaust life was impactful.
”After walking through 400
acres of empty buildings in
a complex that once imprisoned thousands of innocent
people, we ended at this one
building filled with photos,
each with a story behind it.
It’s almost like a climax that
reminds you of what’s most
valuable in life.” She said
there was one portrait that
seemed to be of a brother
and sister proudly posing
for a photographer that was
almost identical to one she
has of her brother and she
as children, posing the same
way.
Raksha said the most powerful moment for her was
going into the gas chamber
in Auschwitz I. “Where you
literally walked into a place
where millions walked in
and didn’t go out. But you
(the tourist) walked out.”
She said in a sense she felt,
in a sense, guilty for walk-
ing out. On a level as human beings we should take
responsibility for each other
because if you don’t, it continues to happen, like it is
now in Sudan, in Rwanda,
and in Syria.”
Emily said the first time the
it really “hit her” was on
track 17 because, “It was the
first time we were standing
where people who went to
the camps had stood, hearing what they had heard.
Being in the presence of that
ghost like memory… I think
it prepared us to go into the
next space.”
Kelly felt moved by the suitcases at Auschwitz I. “They
brought all of there things
thinking that they were being relocated when they
were actually going to their
deaths. It was the deception
that was so horrible. In that
moment I understood more
the magnitude.”
Sue said she found excerpts
from the diaries and letters
at the Berlin Holocaust Museum very powerful. “They
highlighted
individuals.
Like this one letter in Polish from a young girl to
her family asking for food.
Seeing the actual letter was
so personal. Even just the
stroke of the pen. I got very
teary eyed reading that.”
One night we went to the
Auschwitz synagogue to say
kaddish and talk, as a group.
Alex says this was a special
moment for her because
just as every faith has a way
to mourn, “It was nice for
everyone to have (a place to
mourn) in their own way.”
Saying kaddish in the
Auschwitz synagogue also
hit me in a powerful way.
The very fact of us being
there is a sign that hope and
forgiveness has triumphed
over fear and hate.
Margaret Teich
www.faspe.info/journalism2011
I CAN STILL FEEL THE CONFUSION
W
Based on where I’m from
—Rwanda—I had a picture
of Auschwitz in my head. I
figured it was a place where
you could see remains of the
victims and the sophisticated
machinery that was used to
kill them. And having spent
a night in the nearby Polish
town of Oświęcim prior to
the visit of the memorial, I
was able to learn some more
interesting things.
Before going to the death
camp, I spent time speaking with people in the town
square and visiting the last
remaining synagogue: The
Auschwitz Jewish Center. I
learned that it wasn’t only
Jews killed at Auschwitz.
A quick chat with four
young Poles who were having a beer in a bar opposite
Auschwitz Jewish Center
in Oświęcim informed me
they would like the world
to know that Poles were also
killed during German occupation in 1939.
I lost many relatives during
the genocide in Rwanda and
visiting genocide memorials and reflecting on what
happened is usual for me. I
was also planning to check
if there were similarities
with what I already saw in
genocide memorials back
home in Rwanda and what I
would see at Auschwitz.
How, for instance, did the
Auschwitz State Museum
handle victims’ remains?
This would at least be some
good food for my brain as
I follow an ongoing debate
in Rwanda on whether it
is ethical to display some
remains of lovely ones for
museum purposes instead
of burying them somewhere
they can rest in peace. I felt
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comfortable as we started
our tour with other journalism students and I gradually noticed each of us was
touched in a unique way by
what we saw.
We started at the gate of
the site which holds German words “Arbeit macht
frei” and our guide said the
words mean: “work will set
you free.” It didn’t sound
new for me since murderers
during Rwanda’s genocide
would call their activities
to kill Tutsis the word “gukora” which means to work.
Therefore people in Rwanda
would be sensitized on radio
stations during the genocide
to wake up and go for work.
“Auschwitz was not a work
camp, Auschwitz was a
death camp,” our guide said
emphatically, as if someone
else’s voice was still there
to insist the place was a
work camp. We crossed the
double barbed wire fence
of the camp and we toured
different blocks. We saw
where an orchestra made
up of inmates would play
propaganda songs as a way
both to calm the fears of
the prisoners and to help
them march to work. Killers
in Rwanda had their own
propaganda songs too, so I
wasn’t aware of new things
at this point. We saw loads
of survivors’ shoes and other belongings like suitcases
and toothbrushes but again
this wasn’t much shock for
me since I already saw many
genocide victims’ belongings in Rwanda.
But I finally saw the worst
that still haunts me as I write.
I am just having a hard time
understanding how the killers came up with effective
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Photo: Suzanne Rozdeba
hat do you get when you add confusion to confusion? I definitely don’t think get something other than
more confusion. My first visit at Auschwitz leaves me still wondering how human beings are able to do
evil and, not just for a short time or as a quick mistake, but for a sustained and deliberate period of time.
Let me begin with what I thought the place would look like.
Participants of the project visiting the exhibition in so-called Sauna. On the right: Eugene Kwibuka
technology and more advanced ways in slaughtering people. We saw a picture of naked women being
taken to a gas chamber. We
toured inside gas chambers
in which people would be
loaded and killed using
crystal chemicals. Then I
kept waiting to see whether
I will see skull remains of the
victims or any other parts of
the victims’ bodies like in
Rwanda’s memorials. No
way! The killers used cremation methods to reduce the
victims’ bodies to ashes and
we were shown some in a
small quantity.
I learned that most of the ash
that remained was buried in
a nearby Jewish cemetery in
dignity but, coming from a
place where the deceased’s
entire remains are normally
placed in a coffin and buried
in the land, I am not in good
terms with the system where
people’s remains are burned.
I know that cremation is normally an acceptable funeral
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procedure among many cultures including German but
I become unwell with the
feeling that an extermination
plan of the victims was so
successful that their bodies
were easily turned into ashes
using cremation furnaces.
Another troubling story for
me is how the women’s hair
was shorn and then shipped
for use in textile factories.
We saw some hair estimated
at two tons. Our guide estimated that in a display case
before us was the hair of
30,000 women. I just can’t
imagine how human beings
could exploit others to this
extent and I keep wondering
what would have happened
if the Nazis had not been
stopped.
We saw standing cells for
prisoners, suffocation cells,
and starvation chambers,
all different ways that were
used to punish detainees,
often for the smallest infraction, like taking an extra
piece of cloth for warmth.
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When our tour was done, I
kept wondering why people
would do so much evil and
for a long time. I know there
are theories about steps towards genocide and that
should help to manage my
confusion, but it just doesn’t
provide the answer for why
Hitler and his aides couldn’t
stop, think for a minute, and
realize they were wrong.
Neither does it help me understand why people keep
repeating mistakes following the same steps towards
the genocide and many other crimes against humanity.
A bit of math shows the genocide in Rwanda happened
less than 50 years after the
Holocaust.
I can still feel the confusion
as I delve deeper into these
issues but I know that 10
days dedicated to reflections
on professional ethics will
be a good contribution on
the way I handle my work.
Eugene Kwibuka (Rwanda)
Jewish Center
Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 31, July 2011
A STAR
OF WORLD MUSIC
AT THE OŚWIĘCIM
SYNAGOGUE
M
atisyahu, also known as Matthew Paul Miller, the world’s
most famous Jewish musician, combines elements of jazz,
hip-hop, beatboxing, and the Hasidic tradition participated
in the Shabbat prayers at the Chevra Lomdei Mishnayot synagogue
in Oświęcim on June 17.
and prepared by the well
known Warsaw restaurant
owner, Malka Kafka, who
operates two establishments
in the Polish capital, called
“Tel Aviv” and “Haifa.”
Thanks to Matisyahu, Rabbi
Schudrich, and the many
guests, prayers rang out
within the Oświęcim synagogue, which, before the
Second World War, could
be heard in twenty different places of worship in our
town.
Photo: JC
This
special
occasion
brought over 40 individuals from across Poland,
to attend prayers led by
the Chief Rabbi of Poland
Michael Schudrich. After
prayers, the Shabbat dinner
took place, led together with
American-Israeli musician
Maciek Zabierowski
From left: AJC director Tomasz Kuncewicz, Matisyahu, Rabbi Michael
Schudrich and Efraim Rosenstein
AMERICAN SOLDIERS
IN OŚWIĘCIM
A
t the start of each summer, those living in the city center of
Oświęcim and walking either early in the morning or in the
late afternoon, may see a group of young foreigners running
in unison beside the river. Each year, American officers attending the
United States Naval, Air Force, and Coast Guard Academy, as well as
West Point, come to Poland and Oświęcim for a week-long Academy
program devoted to learning the history of the Holocaust and modern
ethical issues connected to military operations.
Photo: JC
Tarnów, Bobowa, and Zakliczyn, where the cadets visited
the only Jewish military cemetery, from the First World
War, in Poland. The program
ended with a hike through
the beautiful Rusinowa Glade
in the Tatra Mountains.
Maciek Zabierowski
Photo: JC
In Bobowa synagogie
Maintenance work at the Jewish cemetary in Oświęcim
diers toured the city and visited the Jewish Center and
Synagogue as well as the
Jewish Cemetery. A part of
their visit included a twoday study visit of the former
Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration and Death Camp as
well as a workshop detailing
the fate of Roma prisoners of
this site.
A special part of the visit
was touring the formerly
Jewish places within Galicia:
Photo: JC
This year, ten students began their stay in Cracow,
where they learned about
Jewish and Polish history of
the city. They also had the
opportunity to hear the testimony of one of the Righteous
Among Nations, Dr. Janina
Rościszewski, who, together
with her parents and brother,
saved twelve Jews from the
Holocaust during the Second
World War.
In Oświęcim, the young sol-
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Academy Program participants visiting Polish Aviation Museum in Cracow
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Center for Dialogue and Prayer Foundation
Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 31, July 2011
WHY DO FUTURE
GOVERNMENT ADMINISTRATORS
FROM GERMANY ORGANIZE
STUDY VISITS TO THE MEMORIAL SITE?
F
or the third time now, a group of students from the School of Management of Public Organizations of North
Rhine-Westphalia have taken part in a study trip to Oświęcim. Why is it so important that future German government administrators to come here? In what manner do their educator and lecturer try to reach these young
people? These are the questions that we have posed the organizer of the journey to “Auschwitz,” Gerhard Hausmann, a lecturer at the School of Management of Public Organizations of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Gerhard
Hausmann:
North Rhine-Westphalia
is the largest state within
the Federal Republic of
Germany, with a population of 18 million individuals. Our school is an
institution that educates
future government workers. This includes officials
working at the local level
(in cities and towns),
state administrators (at
the county, regional levels, and within the Interior Ministry), and those
working within the police ranks. Future government administrators are
educated in a variety of
fields, within appropriate
groups, which include
law as well as specific
areas of study (for example, financial management, criminology), and
this includes education
in social studies—and
this is where historical
education belongs. After
three years of study, the
graduates find work as
administrative officials or
as police officers.
What inspired you to
organize visits to the
Auschwitz
Memorial
Site?
Around ten years ago,
the Interior Ministry took
the political decision that
the process of higher
education must include
historical elements that
deal with government
administration. It was
meant that the main aspect covered was to be
the actions of government
administrators
during
the National Socialist period. The students should,
above all, know how the
administrators of that period gave into the influence of that ideology and
took part in the crimes. A
specific place in the untangling of these events is
the role of the police in the
Holocaust. To accomplish
this goal, various programs and educational
materials have been created. One of the projects
are the seminars that are
to be completed by all the
students. To deepen the
knowledge, educational
trips are planned. In the
realm of historical semi-
Photo: CDP
What educational options do students of the
School of Management
of Public Organizations
have and what type
of employment will
they later find in North
Rhine-Westphalia?
Students from North Rhine-Westphalia with Wilhelm Brasse, a former Auschwitz prisoner
nars, visits to Memorial
Sites take place; among
them is a visit of the former Concentration Camp
of Auschwitz.
In your opinion, what
effect does the visit to
the Auschwitz Memorial Site have on your
students’ thinking and
behavior? What do you
expect of them?
Gerhard Hausmann is a police commissioner, and for
nearly 10 years, an educator at the School of Management
of Public Organizations of North Rhine-Westphalia. He
teaches subjects relating to law and social studies, with
a particular emphasis on how they have shaped history.
In 2004, he became the manager of a research institute
dealing with history and administration. This is where
the projects in educating about history took shape. Previously, he had worked at the police headquarters, within
its administration in various cities (Münster, Bielefeld,
Bonn, Recklinghausen).
After a visit in 2010, he took up the subject of Auschwitz in
the publication Historical Journal and entitled it: A Journey
to Auschwitz. This magazine is distributed electronically to
all lecturers and students of the School of Management of
Public Organizations of North Rhine-Westphalia, meaning around seven thousand individuals.
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How are you personally
affected by your regular
visits to the Memorial
Site and what meaning
does each following visit
have for you?
The visits to the Memorial Site leave a very deep
and emotional impression
on all the participating
students. They discuss
this long after they have
returned from their journey. These debates, which
involve the participation
of the students, also take
place on the public radio.
Many individuals choose
to take part in the seminar
at the Auschwitz Memorial Site. Recently, only in
Münster from nearly 200
students, 111 were chosen for the seminar. Unfortunately, the number
of attendees is limited, so
only certain individuals
are able to take part in this
program. Personally, I
would like to see students
speak about their experi-
GERHARD HAUSMANN
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ences and impressions
with their own friends
and colleagues, in this
way, reminding themselves about the events
that took place under the
rule of the National Socialists.
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Even though I have read
much about this subject
matter in my work at the
School of Management
and I strive to deepen my
knowledge of this history,
I am still moved by these
visits. I have already been
to the Auschwitz Memorial Site seven times and
each time I find a new
facet to this history. The
reason why I continue
to come here is the fact
that I want to give young
people the opportunity to
experience this as well.
This is one my duties
in the framework of the
educational work. This is
also personally touching;
when I see how passionately young people get
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involved in this historical
subject. They are thankful
that someone has given
them the opportunity to
get to know this place,
which is so important in
history.
What are the reactions
among Germans to your
journeys to the Memorial
Site?
Here, we must bring
about a certain disparity. When it comes to students, the reactions are
extremely positive. Less
positive are the reactions
from among those I call,
“the older generation.”
Here, among educators as
well as administrators, especially those within the
police, there are still many
individuals who turn
away from such problems
or just do not have an
opinion on these matters.
However, the number of
these people is dwindling
and this provides us with
hope that those working
in education will start to
become interested in visits to the Auschwitz Memorial Site.
Interview by: Bogumił Owsiany
Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 31, July 2011
Culture
AUSCHWITZ IN LITERATURE
—THE WINNING ENTRY
T
he educational project Auschwitz in Literature has come to an end. Its participants had been the students of Powiatowy Zespół Szkół Ekonomiczno-Gastronomicznych [The County Economic and Gastronomical Schools] Number 4 in Oświęcim. The last stage of project was a contest for the best analysis of Batsheva Dagan’s collection of
poetry, entitled, Imagination: Blessed Be, Cursed Be! The analysis that won the first prize is presented below.
Batsheva Dagan, The Birthday Present. A poem written about a poem written in
Auschwitz.
Poetry allows one to talk
about the simplest things in
a refined and embellished
manner, but it also allows
one to present their most difficult experiences in the simplest words that are the most
to the point. In the poem The
Birthday Present by Batsheva
Dagan, the latter characteristic of poetry is present.
The history connected to the
traumatic experiences of the
prisoners of the Auschwitz
Concentration Camp are
written about in a manner
that is frugal, balanced, honest, and one which gives the
poem a significantly expressive power.
The subject matter of the
poem is presented by both
the title (The Birthday Present),
as well as the by the subtitle
(A poem about a poem written in
Auschwitz). This comes from
the fact that the gift, which
is part of the title—was re-
What was this, soon I will tell you:
This was a drawing,
A slice of bread
And a poem.
had given the extraordinary
present.
The entire poem, to a great
extent, is about the distinction concerning normal life
and vegetation within a
camp. That, which normally
would not draw attention,
grows to the rank of a happening, about which—as
stated in the second lyrical
stanza—the story has to be
told. A need (or even duty)
to free the truth about that
reality is again the common
point of almost every creation that takes on the subject
of the Holocaust, especially
when their authors are individuals who had lived
through and experienced
that hell.
BATSZEWA DAGAN
The next stanza sheds further light about what a
special occasion was the
receiving—the girl who received this gift, was notably
celebrating her eighteenth
birthday, and entering adulthood. What kind of present
is appropriate for such an
occasion? You may ask this
question, but today nobody
will answer that a slice of
bread will make someone
happy on her eighteenth
birthday. However, in the
reality of the poem, this is
how it is—the slice of bread,
that Zosia kept herself from
eating, was the most tangible treat that you were able
to eat, as opposed to the delicacies drawn on the birthday
card. What could you actually give your good friend
“in a place where there are
no things, which you could
give in the free world?”—is
a rhetorical question that is
posed even by the poem.
The same message can be
read in the last two stanzas
of the poem. In the penultimate stanza, the narrator
speaks of what happened
to the gift she received—she
notes that the slice of bread
had been eaten to the last
crumb and the piece of paper that the poem was written on disappeared “like
dust in the air.”
All that is left, however, is
the poem—metaphorically
hidden within the individual who received the gift,
where it had waited for the
moment when it would be
able to tell the story of the
extraordinary gift as well as
the extraordinary girl, who
knew in the cruel world of
the camp that “this treasure within her heart would
cause the joy for others.”
Błogosławiona bądź
wyobraźnio –
przeklęta bądź!
Wspomnienia „Stamtąd”
You may ask this question, but today nobody
will answer that a slice of bread will make
someone happy on her eighteenth birthday.
ceived literally from another
prisoner—in the form of not
only a piece of bread and
drawing, but also a poem
that was written especially
for this occasion. Its author
has been named in the poem
written by Dagan as Zosia Szpigelman, who was deported
to Auschwitz in 1943 and lost
her life in the gas chamber the
same year. The Birthday Present memorializes this individual as well as the specific
situation that was connected
with the birthday, but in the
broader perspective it is also
a moving illustration of the
Camp reality.
The poem consists of twelve
stanzas that contain an irregular number of lines. The
first stanza only describes
the event that will be later
mentioned and draws attention to the place where it occurred, in other words, the
concentration camp and its
conditions, while in the second stanza an explanation of
the gift mentioned in the title
appears:
The drawing—showing a
table covered in a variety of
dishes (a roasted chicken,
broccoli and cabbage soup,
fruit juices and wine, and
even an apple in honey)—
obviously contrasts the slice
of bread, but in the reality of
the concentration camp, this
was a “true delicacy, the best
thing from anything on that
table.” This is because of a
simple reason: “a thin slice
of black bread, with a bit of
sausage” was the reality.
From this perspective, the
description “real” is used
twice in this fragment of
the poem and it takes on a
double meaning. “Real” in
relation to the bread means
that the slice is something
physical, truly exists and it
can be eaten, however, “real”
in terms of word “delicacy”
shows us that, this piece of
bread, received as a birthday
present, is delicious, exceptional, and incomparable.
centration camp, the whole
situation also seems extraordinary, when this is an
attempt to escape the hopelessness and hellishness of
this reality. Without taking
the context of the situation
in which this story is being
told, it may seem infantile
and not worth any attention, so that is why while
reading The Birthday Present
it is important to constantly
remember that it happened
within
a
concentration
camp,
not exist, because the concentration camp simultaneously
questioned and denigrated
the fundamental human
right—the right to live—and
it also changed the rhythm of
time, robbed the individual of
the ability to gauge time, forcing them to accept the rhythm
of camp life, connected with
further roll-calls, labor, and,
inevitably, with selections.
Zosia could not do this,
since—as is stated in the
There is nothing unusual final verse—she “died durthat in such an inhuman ing the final part of the jour-
There is nothing unusual that in such an
A place filled with contempt
inhuman reality, dreams as well as wants
For the human right to life,
A place where you measured time are both the simplest and most important.
From roll-call to roll-call,
And the measuring stick were
reality, dreams as well as ney.” This is how the story,
Unending rows of female prisoners wants are both the sim- that was supposed to be a
plest and most important. gift, like the poem written
This fragment, which comes These were dreams about by Zosia, ends. Within the
from the first stanza of the a decent and nutritious poem written at Auschwitz,
poem is remarkably simple, meal—like the one on the there is no mention of the
yet, at the same time perfect- birthday card—and about grey and terrifying reality
ly illustrates that within the a “life without fear.” This of the camp—instead, there
world of the camp, human is exactly what the girl tell- are “wishes of joy and a deactions, values, and behavior, ing the story in the poem sire for a new life in a new
In the context of the pervad- had been stripped of their nat- was dreaming of, as was world”…
Patrycja Piotrowska
ing conditions in the con- ural sense. That sense could her good friend, Zosia, who
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Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 31, July 2011
WOJCIECH JEKIEŁEK
(1905-1989)
Born on May 23, 1905 to a
peasant family in Osiek, near
Oświęcim, the son of Maciej
and Wiktoria. He attended
the seven-grade public school
in Osiek. He allied himself to
the peasant movement early.
During the interwar period,
he was chairman of the Powiat Executive Board of the
Wici Union of Rural Youth
in Biała Krakowska, while
also serving as secretary of
the Powiat Executive Board
of the People’s Party. During
the peasant strikes of 1937, he
was in charge of the Powiat
Strike Committee, and was
sentenced to six months’ imprisonment as a result.
In the first months of the German occupation, in late December 1939, he attempted
to make his way to Hungary,
in order to be able to join the
Polish army that was forming in France. However, the
Slovakian police caught him
in Prešov and took him back
to the Polish border, where
the gendarmes released him.
He went back to his native
village, but had to go into
hiding because he was under threat of arrest. He soon
joined the fight against the
occupation regime and became a member of the Peasant underground. He set up
a structure to pass news from
foreign radio stations, such as
the BBC broadcasts, among
the village populace. In February 1940, he and other
peasant activists in the Land
of Oświęcim began publishing a clandestine journal titled Wiadomości Podziemia
[Underground News], later
renamed Orka [The Ploughshare]. The first armed units
began forming in the area
in late 1940 under the name
“Chłostra” (Peasant Watch).
Jekiełek became the commander. These units formed
the foundation of the Peasant Battalions (BCh), which
formed in 1941. Jekiełek was
chosen as commander of the
BCh Bielsko Powiat Region.
He used many pseudonyms
in the underground: “Wojtek,” “Opiekun,” and, most
often, “Żmija.” He was the
founder and one of the main
organizers of the so-called
Auschwitz BCh group, which
worked to alleviate the lot
of the prisoners. This group
was founded in mid-1941 at
a secret peasants’ assembly
in Malec, near Oświęcim, and
functioned under the aegis
of the regional BCh headquarters. It grouped together
a range of people, most of
them peasant activists, including many women, who
were committed to the idea
of helping the prisoners in
various ways. These included
supplying food, medicine,
and warm clothing, acting
as intermediaries in covert
correspondence between the
prisoners and their families,
receiving documentation of
the crimes committed in the
camp, sheltering fugitives,
and even taking part in preparing escapes. Jekiełek was
the leader of this group. He
made personal contact with
the prisoners and dropped off
food and medicine for them.
He also dealt with the prisoners on the level of the resistance movement structure.
The prisoners referred to him
as “Opiekun” (The Protector). There are extant secret
messages from those years in
which they thank him and the
local BCh group for the help
they received, mostly in the
form of medicine. These documents may now be found
in the Archives of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim. The funding
designated for the relief effort
came from resistance movement headquarters, contributions by local civilians, charitable organizations, and the
circulation of false food ration
coupons, produced by the
secret Peasant Party “Roch”
printing press in Warsaw,
which were either sold or
exchanged for merchandise.
Near the end of 1942, Jekiełek
and a courier from the national headquarters of the Peasant Battalions, Anna Szalbót
(pseudonym “Rachela”) were
FROM GANOBIS’S CABINET
I
n one of the issues of Oś, I wrote about books that had belonged to
Arthur Lehmann, who had received them from his colleagues as
well as the commandant for his thirty-fifth and thirty-sixth birthdays. It seemed, then, that this would have been the end of this subject,
the two books that contained the dedications. Nothing of the sort!
already mentioned, Arthur
Lehmann had occupied the
house, or if somebody had
simply brought and left the
books there. I was missing this
evidence. After a few months,
I met a friend, whose family had owned the house. She
told me that her mother had
at some point ripped from the
door the nameplate of some
German, who had lived in
Photo: Mirosław Ganobis
In a house not too far from
the Birkenau Camp there was
supposed to be nothing. According to its owners, it was
completely searched earlier.
Other than the books and just
a few other items that I acquired through an antiques
store, since someone had
taken them earlier, the house
was to be empty. However, I
was never able to learn if, the
Door plaque from Artur Lehmann’s house
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the house during the occupation after her family had been
evicted. For me, this was an
issue of great importance,
because I knew that if the
plaque would have the name
Lehmann on it, the mystery
would be solved… Impatiently, I waited for the “present”
from my friend. Once I had
this exceptional object in my
hand, I found that it had the
following written on it: “Lehmann SS-Rottenführer.”
For that reason, I have the
nameplate, but who was Arthur Lehmann, and what did
he do at the camp? This will
most probably remain a mystery. Today, I wonder if the
above-mentioned house may
contain some other secrets. I
hope that during its dismantling we will find some more
interesting items from the
wartime period.
preparing to drop off a shipment of “Christmas presents”
for the prisoners when they
were surprised by a gendarmerie patrol from Osiek. The
gendarmes shot Szalbót dead
on the spot and captured
Jekiełek. He managed to
break free, and was shot and
wounded as he fled. With the
police searching for him, he
went into hiding in the area
near the camp. In February
1943, he managed to make
his way to Cracow, where he
continued his activity in the
BCh Regional Command. He
served at first as an officer for
special missions, and then became deputy instructor and
head of communication for
the Regional Command in the
spring of 1943. While in Cracow, he remained dedicated
to the Auschwitz cause and
maintained clandestine contact with the prisoners. The
Museum Archives contain
a secret message from July
1943 addressed to “Żmija,” in
which prisoners ask him for
help in escaping. In mid-1943,
Jekiełek joined with other resistance movement activists,
mostly from the peasant and
socialist groupings, in setting up the Committee to Aid
Concentration Camp Pris-
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Mirosław Obstarczyk
VESTIGES OF HISTORY
FROM THE COLLECTIONS
OF THE AUSCHWITZ MUSEUM
hittled from a piece of wood, the figuW
rine representing a prisoner is one of the
most symbolic and expressive works of art,
which was created behind the barbed wires of
the Auschwitz Concentration Camp.
This physically small, carved
figurine was most probably
found after the War within
the former Concentration
Camp. It was donated to the
Museum Collection by former prisoner Jerzy Adam
Brandhuber, an artist, who
later became a researcher at
the Auschwitz Memorial Site.
The artist who created this
piece is unknown. The head of
the figure is only partially intact, however, the carving has
lost none of its character. We
have before our eyes, carved
out of light-wood, a figure
of a human being giving the
impression of hopelessness
and
abandonment—with
arms limp at his sides, in misshaped clothing, and enormous shoes. There is a lack in
specific details; the primitiveness of the silhouette evokes a
universalism that intensifies
the message and expression
of this artistic creation. This
is an individual during his
downfall—his grief, his helplessness, his solitude.
Mirosław Ganobis
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oners (PWOK), which was
formed to organize material
aid to the Auschwitz prisoners and receive documentation of the crimes of the SS.
Close relatives of Jekiełek
were also involved in the
Auschwitz relief effort. Three
of them—his brother Franciszek (born 1897), his wife
Marianna (born 1900), and
his daughter Teresa (born
1924)—were arrested in 1943
and held for months in the
Mysłowice investigative prisons, after which they were
sent to Auschwitz. Marianna
and Teresa died in Auschwitz, while Franciszek was
murdered in Buchenwald.
After the end of the war, Wojciech Jekiełek was chairman
of the board of the Cooperative Bank in Kęty. In 1947, the
Regional Military Court in
Cracow sentenced him to six
years’ imprisonment. Freed
from prison in 1950, he settled in Cracow. He graduated
from an external course in
economics and administration, and held white-collar
jobs in Cracow building enterprises until retirement. He
died on January 15, 1989.
Mirosław Obstarczyk
Agnieszka Sieradzka
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Photo: Collections Depatment, A-BSM
PEOPLE OF GOOD WILL
History
Figure of a prisoner
Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 31, July 2011
Photographer
PHOTO JOURNAL
F
Photo: Rebecca Lim
Photo: Rebecca Lim
Photo: Rebecca Lim
Photo: Rebecca Lim
Photo: Rebecca Lim
Photo: Rebecca Lim
Photo: Rebecca Lim
ellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE) is the name of a study program prepared by the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York for a group of journalists, students of law, medicine,
and the seminarians of all faiths. The aim of the program is an attempt to translate the ethical lessons of history to contemporary events, such as genocide, the existence of totalitarian regimes, and corruption. A group of
young individuals visited, among other places, Berlin, the former Auschwitz Concentration Camp, the Wannsee
Conference House as well as Cracow. On pages 10-11 of Oś, you will find more information on the subject of the
conference and reflections of its participants. We will later publish photographs taken by seminar participant,
Rebecca Lim.
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