Ironically this is precisely the same challenge facing almost every site of memory– sad or happy, triumphant or tragic. The effort to make time and deterioration stand still, without considering the ever-changing context for the preserved site makes the actual place more and more “antique” and less and less resonant with the present.
There are no easy answers for the role of heritage in contemporary society, except perhaps to wonder about the ways that traditional physical forms of “world heritage attractions” may tend to museum-ize, routinize, and perhaps even trivialize what need to be powerful memories– even after all the original rememberers are gone.
Latest news from ArtDaily.org December 17, 2010
By Monika Scislowska, Associated Press
WARSAW, POLAND (AP).- Germany pledged Wednesday to pay euro60 million ($80 million) over the next year into a fund for Auschwitz-Birkenau to preserve the barracks, gas chambers and other evidence of Nazi crimes at the former death camp, some of which are deteriorating to the point of collapse.
Germany is the largest of several countries contributing to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Fund, which was set up in 2009 to gather money to maintain the 472-acre expanse made up of the original camp, Auschwitz, the nearby satellite camp of Birkenau. The camp was operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II.
More than 1 million people, mostly Jews, died in the camp’s gas chambers or through forced labor, disease or starvation.
“Germany acknowledges its historic responsibility to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive and to pass it on to future generations,” German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said in a statement. “Auschwitz-Birkenau is synonymous with the crimes of the Nazis. Today’s memorial recalls these crimes.”
Museum director Piotr Cywinski first issued a worldwide appeal for help in 2008, saying that euro120 million was needed to repair the memorial site, which stands as one of the most powerful symbols of the Holocaust.
The barracks, gas chambers and other buildings are in need of urgent repair, having been worn down by the ravages of time and the pressure of more than 1 million visitors a year…
For full story, click here.
Earlier essay on the issues from the New York Sun January 10, 2007
By John Moretti
Is Auschwitz a tourist attraction to be updated with the times, or a solemn burial ground to be left untouched? An international debate has focused on this question ever since the new director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, Piotr Cywinski, announced plans to renovate and remodel parts of the infamous death camp.
Controversy surrounding Mr. Cywinski’s proposal was sparked by an article in Ha’aretz, following his visit in October to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. The article described a “beautification” of Auschwitz.
“I think they got the impression I was going to turn it into a kind of Disneyland,” Mr. Cywinski said. “I will not alter anything, only the exhibition.”
Worries swirled among some former prisoners that the historical integrity of the place would be compromised, and historians posed the question: If you replace even one piece of rusted barbed wire, can the site still be called authentic?
“There are some people who say you should put salt in the earth, so nothing will grow,” the incoming chairman of the International Task Force on Holocaust Education and also the director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, David Marwell, said. “But if you’re going to let people in, you have to make the site accessible.”
Mr. Cywinski, 34, inherited a delicate task when he was installed as director over the summer to prepare for the museum’s first-ever facelift as it approaches its 60th anniversary this coming July. His plans to redesign exhibits that focus on prisoner life, housed in the original Auschwitz camp, and to continue structural upgrades to the crematoria in Birkenau — the massive and sprawling camp three kilometers away, where most of Auschwitz’s prisoners were put to death — were approved in December by the International Auschwitz Council, a group composed of politicians, historians, and Holocaust survivors. Since then, the director has been circling the globe, building support and elaborating on the project.
Like any other museum curator and guardian of a historical artifact, Mr. Cywinski needs to please a number of diverse interests, and regularly fends off charges of revisionism. This balancing act is especially challenging because Auschwitz is one of the most soul-stirring shrines in the world.
“It is a place upon which the entire world is focused,” Mr. Cywinski said during the holiday break, immediately after returning to Poland from Washington, D.C., where he spelled out details of his plans at the United States Holocaust Memorial. “The job requires taking into account a lot of perspectives, but I must prepare for future generations.”
For full story, click here.
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If the medium = message, does the form of the heritage site = the memory?