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Anthropology of East Europe Review
TIME IN THE MUSEUM, THE MUSEUM IN TIME: THE HISTORY OF THE AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU STATE MUSEUM
Amalia Rosenblum, The New Schoolfor Social Research
The topic ofmemory, collective memory and arrive at the desirable pattern from his/her point ::lemory culture has been the focus ofextended of view. :ontemporary scholarship (Boyarin 1994, Simply put, in the following pages I Fentress and Wickham 1992, Gillis 1994, Hutton ask, Who are the authors of the museum? : 993, Huyssen 1995, Le Goff 1992, Middleton Dra\\~ng from the extensive literature on the 2-TId Edwards 1990, Nora 1989, Olick 1999, production of knowledge (from Barth to Schwartz 1991, Terdiman 1993, Yerushalmi Clifford), I look at the museum as a text. This : 982, Young 1994 and 1993) and has also been text has one or more authors, and if the .:.ccompanied by the resurrection of older studies production of the final result is to be on the topic (Halbwachs [1950] 1980 and 1992, comprehended, and the authority producing it \1annheim [1928] 1952).1 Much of the demystified then the authors' political projects :lscussion of memory is already related to the and particular social-historical (and often ~olocaust (Young 1993, 1994, Horkheimer and economical) locations need to be pointed out, _-\domo 1972, Felman 1992, Huyssen 1995) and and their representational strategies scrutinized. :his paper studies a central Holocaust memory Some writers (Young 1993, Steinlauf :'-:;Ject-- the Auschwitz-Birkenau State museum. 2 1997, Dwork and Jan van Pelt 1996) have The research offered here looks at the already demonstrated that the museum in :1:lterconnections between state projects and Auschwitz cannot be seen in isolation from the ~ollective memory. I trace the history of the political and economic changes in Poland. What '::isplay in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State I wish to argue here is that the museum, and its ::1useum, relating it at major turning points to international committees of curators and
Vol. 19, No. 1. Spring 2001, Page: 42 Anthropology of East Europe Revie\\ newspaper accounts. Studying developments in of all Je\vlsh markers. The decree said: "On the Poland I draw mainly from Steinlauf (1997) and site of the former Nazi concentration camp, a Young (1993), but also from works by other monument of the martyrdom of the Polish nation writers as well as from accounts written by the and of other nations is to be erected for all times Auschwitz museum staff, and printed in to come"(Salter et al. 1996:420). The same Promemoria (7) which is a source that can be message was unequivocally expressed in the seen both as primary and secondary. For writing museum, and was related both to postwar about the United States I work mainly with communist politics and to the fact that for a Linenthal (1997) but also with Seidel (1996) and variety of reasons (see Steinlauf 1997) Jews at Kugelmass (1994). While some of these sources the time were victimized by the most explosive may seem obscure, they are almost all that is conflicts in postwar Poland up to that point. available in Hebrew and English about the The above should frame our history of the museum. I have done my best to understanding of the following activities use them conscientiously. It is important to note undertaken by the museum staff. In 1952, the that I use these different sources in distinct ways. International Committee of Auschwitz, Most of the time I use them technically, that is to consisting of survivors and relatives of victims, say, using the data they collected about changes was organized to supervise the project of in the museum or their detailing of certain commemoration, and political events. At other times I use these writers theoretically, that is to say, I use their [t]hough most of [the committee)'s arguments to support or move forward my members were Jews, their identity as argument. survivors was defined largely by their experiences as resistance fighters and as My analysis progresses along lines of Socialists. From its conception, therefore, inquiry both similar to and different from those the memorial at Auschwitz assumed a taken in the other studies mentioned above. It is decidedly internationalist cast. ... the blocks similar to these studies because the museum in at Auschwitz I were converted into national Auschwitz is a museum and a memorial with a pavilions, each with an exposition devoted history, with designers, and with visitors like any to the national memory of a different other. Yet it is different from other studies country's citizens at Auschwitz (Young because this museum is a contested object both 1993: 130). symbolically and physically -- issues of ownership and memory are interconnected here One of these pavilions was assigned to as they are limited by physical borders and be the "Jewish pavilion," and was locked most of distances between nation-states. A study of this the time, being opened only on special occasions museum is also different because the museum is (Steinlauf 1997:70). The exhibition inside the enveloped by a deep (and justified) sensitivity Jewish pavilion was prepared by Polish organizers attached to the events that it attempts to capture,5 with cooperation and help from the Jewish and so its status differs from those of other Historical Institute in Warsaw, the Center for the memorials and museums.6 Documentation of the Jews in Paris, and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem (Zbrzeska 1997:99). The 1944- 1966: Poland 7 Birkenau portion of the camp, where the tracks of The complicated history of the museum the trains taking Jews to their death in the gas actually dates back to the time before its official chambers ended, and where ruins of the barracks, opening,8 and looking at the developments in the the "selection" platform, and the crematoria lay museum in this early period and even later on, around "remained inaccessible and desolate, we must keep in mind the more global rarely viewed by visitors" (Steinlauf 1997:70). background of the Cold War. Two years after the Given the aims of the national decree of liberation of the camp, and two weeks after the commemoration, as Dwork and Jan van Pelt put museum was officially opened to the public, on it, "it made sense that the museum would July 2, 1947, the Polish government declared concentrate the state's meager resources on the that what remained of the camp needed to be part of Auschwitz where Polish resisters and preserved in its entirety and considered a hostages had suffered and died" (1996:364). monument of struggle against the Nazis. 9 That In 1957, the Auschwitz Committee struggle was phrased in tenns of the Polish launched a competition overseen by sculptor identity of its participants, and with the exclusion Henry Moore for a monument that was to be
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used as the focal point of official Jews" (LinenthaI1995:9). In fact, visits by commemorative ceremonies in Auschwitz. Yet American Jews to Poland began as "inducements r:: in 1958 Moore announced that no project for securing donations from wealthy and often submitted to the comrrrittee was fully nonobservant elite within the Jewish satisfactory, and the design that was finally community," later these led to the organization approved in 1959 was a cooperative work of of visits by groups of teenagers (Kugelmass three groups of artists who were selected from 1994:178). Between 1959 and 1970 around the initial pool of suggestions. After a few more 35,000 Americans (presumably almost all of years of challenging financial issues the them Jews) visited the museum. commission and the government accepted the following design: 1967 - 1968: Poland ... the monument consisted of a row of The late sixties were crucial in teffilS of blocklike sarcophagi, slightly elevated, and the Polish state's relationship with both its living a stone tower of cubist figures. Although and dead Jews. It was then, after the Six-Day the memorial sculpture has been described War, during the intense Polish government's as sarcophagal, it also suggested human anti-Jewish purges that the Jewish pavilion in fOffi1S: three abstract figures emerged from Auschwitz was closed "ostensibly for the stone. In these vertically rectangular renovations, and remained closed until 1978, shapes rising to round blocks, one could see when it was rededicated" (Young 1993:130). the cubist shadow lines of a torso with Moreover, the version of the memorial discussed rounded head perched on top. In their above was not what was unveiled to the public in number and sizes, they resemble a human Auschwitz in 1967. While some snapshots show cluster: two parents and a child (Young evidence that the figures did stand as planned for 1993:139-141). one week, just before the dedication itself, the carved stones were replaced by a polished square However, despite its official acceptance, the fate of black marble with a triangle in the middle, of the chosen design was yet to be determined. with no official explanation for this change to this day. This is what, Young suggests, is at the heart of this: 1966-1967: Israel and the United States ... in their different sizes, the stones did not Between 1959 and 1970 about 320 satisfactorily define the political character people from Israel visited the Auschwitz of the victilllS desired by the authorities. museum. In 1966, and again in 1967, delegations Although the triangle represented all the of young people from Israel visited the death victilllS, it does so in the figure of camps in Poland. Yet with the break ofthe Six specifically political inmates. By contrast, Day War, Poland, like most of the Communist the different sizes of stones in the initial bloc, severed diplomatic relations with Israel, sculpture suggested children, who could not and the visits to the camps ceased (Segev have been killed as political prisoners, but 1993:478). In Israel, talk about the war was only as Jews. In 1967, the discerning saturated with Holocaust imagery and anxieties, critical eye of the authorities apparently and this discourse approximated the perception caught this subtlety of meaning, which led of the war by American Jews. them to replace human figures with a symbol of political suffering (1993, 141). It is generally agreed (Seidel 1996, Segev 1993, Linenthal1995, Friedlander 1994, 1968-1986: Israel and the United States Young 1993, Kugelmass 1994) that "[b]y far the most important event in the resurrection of After the anti-Zionist campaign of the Holocaust imagery in American as well as Israeli late 1960s, as Steinalufputs it, "[a]broad, it was life ... was the Six-Day War." Fear of "another believed that the history ofthe Jews in Poland Auschwitz" intensified, and once the war was had come to an ultimate conclusion; it was over, America's Jewry did not withdraw into common to speak of "the end of a thousand their pre-1967 hiding/indifference. \0 Indeed years"(1997:93). For most of the 1970s, the "'Never Again'" was heard not only from the publication American Jewish Year Book, which Jewish Defense League, but also from the published news of even the smallest Jewish mouths and pocketbooks of many American communities around the world stopped mentioning Poland in its reports. Between 1971
Vol. 19, No.1. Spring 2001, Page: 44 Anthropology of East Europe Review and 1980 only 245 Israelis visited the museum. and between 1971 and 1980 more than 5,200,000 Unable and not willing any longer to save a Poles visited the museum. But the most special place for Poland in the commemoration important event in Poland at the time historically of the Holocaust, in 1975 Israel installed a speaking was the rise of Solidarity. As smaller version ofNathan Rappoport's Warsaw Hobsbav.m characterized it, "from ... [1956] until ghetto monument (the original of which is in the triumph of Solidarity at the end of the 1980s, Warsaw) at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum Polish politics and economics were dominated and memorial center in Jerusalem. However, by by the confrontation of irresistible mass, the the 1980s, the changes in Poland were known in regime, and immovable object, the working Israel, and in 1983 "an unofficial delegation of class" (1994:398). Solidarity, which began as a Israeli historians was received at Polish struggle for the right of Polish workers to be academic institutions"(ibid.:104). represented by an independent trade union, quickly evolved into much more. By the end of In a way the end of the seventies can be its initial period of legal existence, "Solidarity, marked by the American Jews renewed interest both as an organization and as a spirit ... allowed in the Holocaust. In 1979 Y affa Eliach wrote people [mally to look each other in the eyes, that "the American Jews had discovered the [and] had penetrated into every comer of civil "vast educational and financial potential of the society, indeed, it had become that society" Holocaust." It was, she said, "an instant Judaizer, (Steinlauf 1997:97). However, in 1981 the Polish shocking people back into their Jewishness ... state ceased to accept Solidarity's challenge to its One may sadly reflect that 'there is no business authority and the breach it caused in the state's like Shoah business'" (LinenthaI1995:13). That monopoly ofpower. In December ofthat year the Holocaust was, to use Eliach's term, "an General Wojciech Jaruzelski proclaimed martial instant Judaizer," is arguably at the heart oflater law, and began a campaign to smash solidarity American visits to Auschwitz today and in the and "restore order," causing Poland to split into past, and one reason that it functions in this way two worlds, "on one hand, a visible daily public is the potential it has of making Jewish visitors life of deprivation, decay, and frustration [and] feel politically better about themselves. 11 During on the other hand, an invisible private life, lived the seventies, more than 82,000 Americans 'underground,' of emotional warmth, intellectual visited the museum at Auschwitz. Misreading and spiritual energy" (ibid.:101-102). the contemporary Israeli-Arab conflict, some Simultaneously, many younger Poles started to Jews were using the Holocaust "as a weapon by express interest in Poland's Jewish past. Some which [they] claimed innocence and Polish historians and intellectuals even righteousness through their suffering. 12 This ... succeeded in maintaining contact with western blinded them to the injustice ... inflicted on the Jewish colleagues. Palestinians", and made the Holocaust into a kind of "safe haven" for some Jews (ibid.: 15). 1986-1993: Israel and the United States 1968-1986: Poland. The renewal and development of visits by high-school students to Poland (Keren In 1978, the Jewish Pavilion in the 1998:93-100) are key in tracing the later part of Auschwitz museum was reopened on the this history. It is a vivid example of how the occasion of the 35th anniversary ofthe Warsaw different interest groups involved in this story ghetto uprising. The display was totally often speak to each other through visits to the redesigned, and before its construction, repeated museum, transforming it either directly as a consultations were carried out between the means for their speech or indirectly, along the Polish organizers and representatives of the way. United Jewish Appeal Federation, The Ghetto Fighters Kibbutz, Yad Vashem, and the Center In 1988, the Ministry of Education for the Documentation of the Jews in Paris. began organizing visits ofIsraeli high school students to Poland. However, the very first visits In June 1979, Pope John Paul II visited were not initiated by the Ministry of Education Poland, and gave a mass at Auschwitz, one that but were organized by the association of the was connected not only to the struggle Kibbutzim who sent official delegations of youth surrounding the Carmelite convent, but is also to Poland back when it was still under a connected to the more recent one concerning the Communist regime. crosses at Auschwitz. Undoubtedly, the pope's visit added to the domestic visits to the museum,
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)00 The fIrst pictures from these visits, Washington museum had signed offlcial showing Israeli teenagers crying on the agreements with almost every Eastern European lly extermination commemoration sites in Poland country, thus allowing the museum not only to caused a public commotion in Israel, especially collect vast numbers of artifacts, but also to copy Hil among young people. Upon their return, the massive amounts of archival material previously )s, young visitors kept describing their experiences inaccessible to scholars. The immense task of emotionally, emphasizing that "everyone must collection meant establishing relationships w,ith visit Poland," and stating that "in Poland I Holocaust museums in Europe. (ibid.:152), understood why the state ofIsrael is important," However, what is probably best a .. Now I'm sure I'll never emigrate," etc. (quoted remembered from the eighties, in terms of the in Keren 1998). Many educators, especially history recounted here, is the struggle among the Kibbutzim, were very satisfied with surrounding the Cannelite convent near f the educational accomplishment illustrated by Auschwitz. In 1984, a group ofCannelite nuns these teenagers' statements. And Keren argues moved into a building neighboring the state that after a long period oftrial and error in the museum structure. 13 In 1985, a Belgian Catholic attempts to educate teenagers toward a Zionist organization appealed to receive support for the commitment and shape their Jewish identity, it convent using the language of Catholic seemed as if the best way for achieving these triumphalism, which led Edgar Bronfman to 5h ends was fInally found. raise the issue of the convent with Polish its authorities. An agreement was reached according Another signifIcant phenomenon, to which the nuns were to move out within two according to Keren, was the almost intentional years. However, by the expected date nothing exclusion by both trip organizer and participants II was done towards moving the nuns to a new of anything having to do with Poland and the location. In 1989, a group ofAmerican Jews led Polish people. All Poles, in the past and in the by a New York Rabbi climbed over the convent present, were perceived as anti-Semitic, and fence and began an angry demonstration. Rising during the Communist era, up to 1990, some out ofa war, the museum zone was turning again Israeli visitors derived pleasure from seeing the into a war zone -- only this time it is a war over poverty and difflcult conditions existing in al the meaning ofthe original one. Poland at the time, saying more than once, "They got what's coming to them" (cited in Keren Against the background of changes in 1998). the museum display, to which I will now turn, the convent signifIed continuities in terms of All the while, the number of educational what was believed by many to be the authentic institutions and students wishing to visit Poland Polish response to the Holocaust. Meanwhile, each year has grown incredibly. In recent years, however, Americans were contributing their around 12,000 Israeli teenagers have been share to the commercialization of Auschwitz, as Yisiting Poland annually, and they in turn between 1981 and 1995 about a quarter million constitute only a part ofthe general number of Americans visited the museum, more than half of Israelis visiting the country. Between 1981 and them arriving after 1991. 14 1990 about 23,000 Israelis visited the museum, and they were followed by around 50,000 more 1985-1993: Poland between 1991 and 1995. Up to the last moment ofthe struggle, By the mid-eighties, General Jaruzelski Polish politics were infused with war time met with World Jewish Congress president symbolism. Seen vis-a-vis the Warsaw ghetto Edgar Bronfman in New York. And in 1989, the memorial, it is evident that competition to Washington museum council embarked on a appropriate the meaning ofthe uprising was publicized trip to Poland, "structured as a reaching its climax in 1988, for its forty-fIfth pilgrimage, complete with wreath-Iayings, anniversary. Solidarity'S commemorative lightings of candles, [and] the recitation ofthe activities differed from the government's, which kaddish." During the visit, the group collected used the occasion to dedicate new monuments bricks from the Warsaw ghetto wall and other around the ghetto memorial. These new relics from Auschwitz to be displayed in the commemorative additions were, interestingly American museum (Linenthal 1995: 165). By enough, developed with informal Israeli input 1992, Miles Lerman, the chairman of the (Steinlauf 1997: 108). Indeed, by the mid international-relations committee ofthe eighties, Poland began to reestablish its
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connections with Israel, severed twenty years desire to create socialist martyrs. The previously. This was expressed both in inflated number may have diminished contemporary politics and in politics of the past. Stalin's own crimes, even as it created Soon after the political change, Prime millions of Polish and Soviet martyrs at Minister Mazowiecki convened a commission to Auschwitz (Young 1993:141). discuss the future of the State museum directly, and Other changes became noticeable as in this acknowledged the change in official memory museum labels for the exhibition and the that came with the new government. The new museum's publication were reformulated to Auschwitz council, under the direction of the Polish formally acknowledge the fact that the majority Ministry of Culture, was "charged with redesigning of the camp's victims were Jews (which was not the museum and monuments at Auschwitz, acknowledged prior to 1989). To the existing reorganizing the ruins in ways that strip them of their museum labels in Polish and German were added previous Marxian undergirding" (Young 1993: 150). occasional English ones. In 1990, the new In 1990, the museum director since museum committee also came up with the 1955, Kazimirz Smolin -- who was a prisoner at Yarnton Declaration, a framework within which Auschwitz-- already 70 years old at the time, was negotiations over the use and memory of replaced by Jerzi Wroblewski (in Auschwitz Auschwitz can be conducted. History, Present, Future, a 1994 documentary And in continuation with Hobsbawm's directed by Miklaszewski), and it was made clear observation that "[i]n regimes where politics was that "[t]he official exhibition, which was so obvio:usly in control, no sharp line between established in the late 1950s, is considered political and economic developments can be outdated [and] is supposed to be replaced by a drawn" (1994:397), economic considerations completely new version within the next few cannot be left out of the picture of post-socialist years" (Spielman 1994:169). Also in 1990, the Poland. By the 1990s the Polish economy was Foundation for Commemoration of the Victims changing drastically, and visits to what has been of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Death camp was sometimes called the country's "number 1 tourist established. Financed solely by private and attraction" definitely contributed to it. 16 Since the institutional donors from Poland and abroad, the 1990s, we have been witnessing, as Kugelmass foundation has since been involved with many puts it, the changes in the museum display and in the museum's conservation efforts (Marszalek responsiveness, if not the very 1997:127). solicitousness ofEast European countries themselves. Floundering economically, and The memorial monument erected in pressed for hard currency, they [md that Birkenau in 1967 consisted of a combination of Western tourism represents a relatively ruins and sculpted art. On twenty stone tablets simple way to generate income. Here, then, the following message was inscribed: "four lies an obvious, if not entirely happy, million people suffered and died here at the marriage: the East European thirst for hands of the Nazi murderers between the years income, the Jewish search for roots, and 1940-1945." Yet, with Poland's change in [mally, the recent emergence of the regime twenty-three years later, these Holocaust as a subject of popular Jewish inscriptions were removed from the tablets, as discourse, indeed, as one of the tenets of the new estimate of the number ofAuschwitz's what Jonathan Woocher refers to as victims now revolves around 1,100,000 (Olesky American Jewish "civil religion" 1997:7). The question of how many died in (Kugelmass 1994: 176). Auschwitz 15 is a good example of how knowledge of the past is presented and to what All of this is made even more interesting, and the political aims (see also the 1992 Documentary Polish economic project more complex, if we Auschwitz: Recollections ofPrisoner # 1327 take into consideration the fact that the general directed by Smolen): number of visitors to the camp, as at all the concentration camps in Poland, has dropped The figure of 4 million was as wrong as it significantly in recent years. This is largely due was round, arrived at by a combination of to the demise of officially sponsored group (and the camp commandant's self-aggrandizing especially school) visits from the ex-communist exaggerations, Polish perceptions of their world (Salter et a1. 1996:419). In other words, great losses, and the Soviet occupiers' even if Auschwitz has always been a site of mass
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tourism, and even if the museum was prepared to The ceremonies included an ecumenical deal with the number of visitors, since the late ceremonial service at the Warsaw eighties it had to take into account the fact that synagogue with the unprecedented presence the composition oftourists changed. of Church officials, and climaxed with an official wreath-laying ceremony at the 1993: Israel and the United States ghetto monument that included President Nineteen-ninety three was a year of a Lech Walesa; Marek Edelman; the Israeli general increase in the Israeli State involvement prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin; and the U.S in the visits to Poland. By then criticism ofthe vice president, Al Gore. Thousands of Jews from all over the world were present as ot way teenager's visits to Poland were organized had mounted and a public debate opened up, well. These included elderly Holocaust survivors but also many young Israelis who led leading the Ministry of Education to search for ways of improving the content of the tours and surrounded the monument in a sea ofIsraeli the quality of the guides. The Ministry of flags. Most Poles, lacking the special passes required to approach the monument, h Education then began training guides to accompany groups going to Poland. The goals of watched the proceedings from great the teenagers' trips were redefined and a new distance behind police barricades (Steinlauf emphasis was placed on learning about the 1997:131).17 s Jewish existence in Poland in the past, and about That year, 1993, an international as the cultural and social pluralism that symposium was organized in Oswiecim entitled characterized Polish Jewry in its 1000 years of The Future ofAuschwitz: Should the Relics be existence. Likewise, the importance oflearning Preserved? Despite the difference in opinions, :ibout Polish history was brought to the front as the fmal result has been a successful re \\as knowledge ofthe Polish people and the incorporation of Birkenau into the museum. complexities of Jewish-Polish relationships Today, the number of museum visitors making II before, during, and after the Holocaust. The trips the trip to Birkenau is estimated as 80% of all ist Degan to include meetings with Polish students, museum visitors (Olesky 1997:9). he :is well as meetings with "Righteous among the '\ations." The same year, the late Prime Minister With the connections with Israel Yitzhak Rabin was the first Israeli leader to visit renewed, and with the rise in the number of Poland, attending the ceremonies marking the Jewish visitors, in 1993 the area that was used 50th anniversary ofthe (soon to be discussed) for the "selection" process by the Nazis was \\"arsaw ghetto revolt. extensively renovated. In a clear digression from previous committee attitude and decisions (see While central in both Israel and Poland, Rawecka and Rawecki 1997:13-20), the ramp "[fJor 1110st of the Jews of the world, the Warsaw was no longer "preserved as original" but L :eremonies were hardly central; in the United became more clearly visible, as new ballast was States that role was filled by the opening ofthe placed between the rails, and gravel was added. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, The museum administration also decided to put D.C." (Steinlauf 1997: 131). Besides the opening up dozens of signs on the grounds in order to of the American museum, the Americanization provide more information to visitors. of the Holocaust found another expression that year. Nineteen-ninety three saw the most Indeed, in 1993 ties with Israel publicized and popular manifestation of America strengthened to such a greater degree, that the mterest in the Holocaust - the box office success Israeli National Holocaust Authority and of Steven Spielberg's movie Schindler's List, Educational Center, Yad Vashem, after initiating courses for the training ofIsraeli guides, began e which received the Academy A ward for the best film ofthat year. to host an annual seminar in Jerusalem for Polish guides. This cooperation has meant that for three 1993: Poland weeks a year several dozens of the Auschwitz museum guides study the Holocaust and Jewish In Poland, the fiftieth anniversary ofthe history and culture in Jerusalem (written Warsaw ghetto uprising was symbolic of the communication with Olesky, 17 November, changes that have taken place in the relationship 1998). between the three bodies of interest:
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]993-1998: Israel and The United States. this may be many, and Poland's government difficulties with the helicopter memorandum are By the mid 1990s it had become surely relevant. Yet Israeli media also reported impossible to see the rise in Jewish American that in speaking about the confusion, Polish visits 18 and the Jewish American identity project government sources suggested that the in isolation from their Jewish Israeli government was disappointed that Netanyahu's counterparts. In 1996, about 20,000 Israelis and visit was for one day only and that most of his 40,000 Americans visited the museum, with time was going to be devoted to events similar numbers following them in 1997. I agree commemorating the Holocaust (Haaretz April with Kugelmass that 22, 1998). This is not the fIrst Polish criticism of [0]ne cannot help but think that the the specifIc lessons that Israel chooses to draw popularity of events such as the March of from the Holocaust. Wilkanowicz critically the Living, a pilgrimage to the death camps remarked that since Israel is always potentially involving thousands of North American on a verge of a war, and since it has a Jewish school children, is increasing in heterogeneous population "it is understandable direct proportion to the ambiguousness of that Shoah has become as if a national the Middle East situation: as long as Israel ideology ... [but this is hazardous, for] it hinders was perceived as a David against Goliath, thought of the future, and sometimes engenders there was no need for a ritual to convince hostility toward those whom many feel to be too participants and spectators of the focused on their own misfortune ... " (1997:28). vulnerability of the Jewish people. But with In 1998, the International Council ofthe the increasing perception of Israel as museum included among its members Polish Goliath - the use of stones by Palestinians Senator Wladislaw Bartoszewski, Poland's is also a rhetorical strategy - there is Minister of Culture and Arts, Joanna Wnuk increasing need for Jews to formulate a Nazarowa, Deputy Minister Stanislaw Zurowski, counter-rhetoric ofremembered and Andrzej Sikora who is also the Polish victimization. Certainly, the Holocaust's Government's special representative. In the past attraction is its very lack of ambiguity 50 years, therefore, despite changes, the two (Kugelmass 1994: 179). states and the American Jewish community have One incident that in a way expresses not ceased to communicate with each other many ofthese interconnections is the statement through Auschwitz- both symbolically and on made by Israeli Major General Yossi Ben-Hanan the physical grounds of the museum itself who accompanied Netanyahu's 1998 delegation through marches, ceremonies, committees and to Auschwitz. Ben Hanan said that the oath of delegations. allegiance to the State ofIsrael taken by the elite Lately, there have been more changes units of the IDF should be from time to time planned by the museum committee. Probably in administered at death camps such as Majdanek response to the March of the Living, the route and Auschwitz-Birkenau (Melman: 1998). Ben followed by the Jews sent to the gas chambers at Hanan was in Poland as part of Netanyahu's Birkenau will be established for pedestrians. delegation, part of a government initiative to join Other plans include integrating a buffer zone the March of the Living on Holocaust Memorial around the former Auschwitz and Birkenau Day, and combine this visit with an attempt to camp, with the reassignment of all the existing apply pressure on Poland to close a certain historical objects that were once auxiliary to the highly valued helicopter deal with Israel. He had operation of the camp. There is also a plan to met with the Polish chief of staff as well as reconstruct the "Judenrampe" that functioned for senior defense offIcials in order to promote the unloading prisoners, to renovate the sauna arms deal between the two countries. building in Birkenau, and to display an ] 993 - Present: Poland. exhibition of family photographs "depicting in a symbolic way the world of the European Jews in While in the museum itself several which most of the victims had lived, and which dozen staff members were busy with tasks was irreparably destroyed as a result of the related to the March of the Living, a day before Holocaust" (museum bulletinI998:2-3). Today, Netanyahu's arrival, "thanks to glitches in the educational activities of the museum include communication and preparations" Poland's sending Polish teachers to seminars in Israel, and leaders were out of the country. The reasons for hosting Israeli teachers at Polish seminars.
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Up to 1989, the museum was funded by Holocaust memorial in Washington D.C.). This the Polish state alone. By 1997, the museum was suggests not only that a complex net has to be being supported not only by the Foundation but cast in order to capture the different locations also by Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, which are involved in the production of Greece, Russia, the Netherlands, Switzerland and knowledge/experience, but also that the final 5 of course Israel. Clearly, the museum today is product is constantly in flux, for it is forever not the same one it was 50 years ago. produced anew, with each representation and interpretation of it. Conclusion References of Historical museums tell a story, and it is this story that we have seen the different interest Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in groups try to manipulate and control, each for its Oswiecim. Bulletin 3 5. Oswiecim: own ends. For as White wrote, "every fully Auschwitz- Birkenau State Museum. 1998 realized story ... is a kind of allegory, points to a Barth, R. 1982. "Authors and Writers." InA moral, or endows events, whether real or Barth Reader. Susan Sontag editor. New imagined, with a significance that they do not York: Hill and Wnag: 185-193. possess as a mere sequence ... [and similarly] every historical narrative has as its latent or Boyarin, l, ed. 1994. Remapping Memory: The o manifest purpose the desire to moralise the Politics ofTimeSpace. Minneapolis: events of which it treats" (1987:15). It seems as University ofMinnesota Press. if it is not only the case that ideology is built into Clifford, J. (1988) 1994. The predicament of history-- i.e. that narrating, explaining, describing, interpreting and translating are not Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, independent activities-- but that it is also true Literature and Art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press L that the very existence of conflicting interpretations is irtherent to historical ____. 1983. "On Ethnographic representation. This is so because only when the Authority" Representations 1(2): 118-146. status of events as manifestations of reality is not contested are they not narrativized. If the events Dwork, D. and R. Jan van Pelt. 1996. Auschwitz: could truly "speak for themselves" there would 1270 to the Present. New York: W.W. be no need to place them in a historical narrative, Norton & Company. which is to say that "it is because there is a Felman, S. and D. Laub. 1992. "The Return of contest that there is something to the Voice: Claude Lanzmann's Shoah" narrativize"(ibid.:19). Put differently, "[u]nless from Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in at least two versions of the same set ofevents Literature, Psychoanalysis and History. can be imagined, there is no reason for the New York: Routledge. historian to take upon himself the authority of giving the true account of what really happened" Fentress, J. and C. Wickham. 1992. Social (ibid.:20). Needless to say, White's historian can Memory. Oxford: Blackwell. be replaced "vith the history museum and with Friedlander, S. 1994. "Memory of the Shoah in the states involved. Israel: Symbols, Rituals, and Ideological The different projects we have seen Polarization." In Holocaust Memorials: The here (the identity politics ofAmerican Jews, the Art ofMemory in HistOlY. J. Young editor. paternalistic relationship between the US and New York: Prestel-Verlag: 149-157. Israel, the political educational ambitions of an Gillis, L, ed. 1994. Commemorations: The Israel concerned with securing its allies, Politics ofNational Identity. Princeton: motivating its future soldiers, and protecting its Princeton University Press. economy, and the stormy political changes of Poland combined with the new and challenging Halbwachs M. 1992. On Collective Memory. economic developments) are all linked through Edited and translated by Lewis A. Coser. wars (the Six Day War, the Cold War), movies Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (e.g. the internationally successful and influential ____' [1950] 1980. The Collective Memory. Schindler's List), money (via touristic New York: Harper. exchanges), and museums (e.g. the relationship between the Auschwitz museum and the national
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Hobsbawm, E. 1994. The Age ofExtremes: A Nora, P. (ed.) (1984) 1998. Realms ofMemory: History ofthe World, 1914-1991. New The Construction ofthe French Past. York: Pantheon Books. Columbia University Press: New York Hobsbawm E. and T. Ranger, eds. 1983. The Novick, P. 1994. "Holocaust Memory in Invention ofTradition. New York: America" in Holocaust Memorials: The Art Cambridge University Press. ofMemory in History. " J. Young editor. New York: Prestel Verlag: 159-165. Horkheimer, M. and T. Adorno. 1972. Dialectic ofEnlightenment. New York: Herder and Olesky, K. 1997. "historical Truth Comes First." Herder. Promemoria (7): 7-11. Hutton, P. H. 1993. History as an Art of Olick, J. K. 1999. "Geme Memories and Memory. Burlington: University of Memory Gemes: A Dialogical Analysis of Vermont. May 8th , 1945 Commemoration in the Federal Republic of Germany". in press Huyssen, A. 1997. "The Voids ofBerlin" American Sociological Review June 1999. Critical Inquiry 24 (1997): 57-81 ____. n.d. Figurations ofMemory: A ____.1995. Twilight Memories: Marking Process-Relational Methodology, Time in a Culture ofAmnesia. New York: Illustrations on the German Case. Routledge. Manuscript. Dept. of Sociology, Columbia Iwaszko, E. and T. Zbrzeska. 1997. "Auschwitz: University. A Museum Lesson". Promemoria (7): 106 Rawecka, J. and M. Rawecki. 1997. "Antinomies 110. of Memories." Promemoria (7):13-20. Keren, N. 1998. "A Memory-Shaping Journey: Salter, M. and G. McLachlan. 1996. Poland: The Highschool Students' Visits to Poland" In Rough Guide. London: Rough Guide Ltd. Memory and Awareness ofthe Holocaust in Israel. Rappel, Y. editor. Tel Aviv: Seidel, R. 1996. Never Too Late to Remember: Massuah: 93-100. The Politics Behind New York city's Holocaust Museum. New York: Holmes and Kugelmass, L. 1994. "Why We Go to Poland: Meier. Holocaust Tourism as Secular Ritual." In Holocaust Memorials: The Art ofmemory in Segev, T. 1994. The Seventh Million: The History. J. Young editor. New York: Prestel Israelis and the Holocaust. New York: Hill Verlag: 175-183. and Wang. Le Goff, J. 1992. History and Memory. New Smolen, K. 1992. Auschwitz: Recollections by York: Columbia University Press. Prisoner No. 1327. Warsaw: Piotrowski and Pindur. A documentary film. Linenthal, E. 1997. Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America's Holocaust Spielman, J. 1994. "Auschwitz is Debated in Museum. New York: Penguin Books. Oswiecim: The Topography of Remembrance." In Holocaust Memorials: Mannheim, K. [1928] 1952. "The Problem of The Art ofMemory in History. J. Young Generations." Pp. 276-322 in Essays on the editor. New York: prestel-Verlag: 169-173. SOCiology ofKnowledge, by Karl Mannheim. London: Routledge and Kegal Steinlauf, M. 1997. Bondage to the Dead: Paul. Poland and the Memory ofthe Holocaust. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Marszaleck, K. 1997 "A Friend In Deed is a Friend Indeed". Promemoria (7): 127-128. Terdiman, R. 1993. Present Past: Modernity and the Memory Crisis. Ithaca: Cornell Melman, Y. 1998. "General:IDF units should be University Press. sworn at Auschwitz" April 24, Haaretz. Tel Aviv. Wagner-Pacifici, R. and B. Shwartz. 1991. "The Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Middleton, D. and D. Edwards, eds. 1990. Commemorating a Difficult Past." American Collective Remembering. Newbury Park: Journal o..fSociology 97, 2: 376-420. Sage.
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y: \\'hite, H. 1987. The Content and the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical events that take place on the museum grounds, Representation. Baltimore: The Johns the museum's preservation and educational Hoppkins University Press. activities, the monuments that adorn it, the irt \\'ilkanowicz, S. 1997. "Religious Symbols in language of its signs and so on and so forth. Auschwitz." Promemoria (7): 25-28. These aspects of the museum are all concerned with the production ofhistorical knowledge and \\"roblewski, J. 1997. "Preserving the Memory memory. I use the term 'historical knowledge' to it. " for All Time". Promemoria (7): 3-5. signify that the museum teaches visitors about a Yerushalmi, Y. 1982. Zakhor: Jewish History historical evellt -- the Holocaust-- and use and Jewish Memory. Seattle: University of 'historical memory' to signify that it tries to 'f Washington Press. produce a memory of a historical narrative--the meaning ofthe Holocaust. These two are very Young. J. 1994. ed. Holocaust Memorials: The complicated processes and they are not at all Art ofMemory in HistOlY. New York: independent of each other. Also, taking its Prestel Verlag and the Jewish Museum. inspiration from different studies (Young 1989, ___. 1993 The Texture ofMemory: Linenthal1995, Seidel 1996, Segev 1993) that Holocaust Memorials and Meaning. New look at the history and the political construction Haven and London: Yale University Press. of different memorials and historical museums, (as well as from works such as Lieux de ___.1989. "The Biography ofa Memorial Memoire which focuses the historiographic gaze Icon: Nathan Rappaport's Warsaw Ghetto les on the phenomenon of commemoration itself), Monument." representations 26 (Memory the part of my research presented in this paper and counter-memory): 99-106. seeks to subject the State Museum at Auschwitz 1986. "Memory and Monument" in Bitburg ill Birkenau to a similar historical-political analysis. Aforal alld Political Perspective. G. 3 Yet all of the above is not to say that the three Hartman, ed. Bloomington: Indian different groups, these three memories, are university Press: 103-113. monolithic, and that they can only be limited by Id Zbrezeska, T. 1997. "Bringing History to each other. It is important to fIrst introduce the Millions." Promemoria (7):96-101. role ofthe "State" in both the process of constructing a representation ofhistory and in -'ates the perception of this construction, but it is also important not to let the "State" obstruct the view entirely, and prevent us from recognizing sites of . This paper is dedicated to the memory of resistance. There is resistance to offIcial political :! Professor William Roseberry, whose attentive interpretation of the Holocaust coming from guidance and meaningful insight helped me with guides, curators, visitors and survivors within the MA thesis from which this paper evolved. I each group. However, the focus of the part ofmy 3lso want to thank Professor Ikegami and the research presented here is not on resistance. The entire "State, Market, Culture" pro seminar at the success with which the different aims are '\;e\v School (Fall '98-Spring '99) for their achieved, or put differently, the degree to which remarks on earlier versions of this paper, and to the different interest groups succeed in 311 the smart people who asked me important constructing the museum according to their questions in the different occasions on which I interpretations and aims is the second step in this presented parts ofthis paper. Similarly I want to investigation, the fIrst one being the process of thank Kathrine Ziegler, Laurie Hinck, Jean construction itself-- how the museum came to Hoaninger and Ilisa Lam for their wise represent the Holocaust in a certain way as a comments and support throughout the year. The result of the push and pull of different political \L\ thesis development group was an excellent ambitions. To summarize then, the museum is Idea. Finally I want to thank my husband Assaf seen in this paper as an institution caught up for his wisdom and for his confidence in me. between three bodies of interests, each of which wishes to use it as its own ideological apparatus, 2 I understand The Polish State Museum in A.uschwitz-Birkenau to be the complex which and each of which faces obstacles both from within (obstacles raised by dissenting members includes the exhibitions, the ceremonies and
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of the same group) and from without (difficulties visitors to the Auschwitz museum tourists? This raised by the two other states). question is, in a way, discussed in the second half of this paper, which deals with visitors' 4 A full analysis should also consider the role of experiences and is more ethnographic in terms of Germany (the state and the visitors), but materials used, for in exploring this and related methodologically this lies outside the scope of questions I draw from visitors' private and this paper. public textual productions and personal 5 It is here that I would like to emphasize that communication. while I look at the way the museum experience is 7 My account of Poland begins right after the constructed, this is not to deny that many come war, while the two other narratives offered here to the museum for personal acts of remembrance. begin only in the 1960s. For various reasons the What I am concerned with is demonstrating that 1940s and 1950s were characterized by an not all visits to the museum are spontaneous and especially dormant Holocaust awareness in Israel that the final result is always also dependent (see Friedlander 1994) and the United States (see upon political structures larger than the Novick 1994), and thus I have not found it individual visitor. worthwhile to try and take the story so far back 6 Grabum wrote that travel is secular societies' in history. Read in light of the Cold War we modem equivalent of the annual and life long must recall that "the first thing to observe about festivals of more traditional societies (1989:23), the socialist region of the globe [is] that for most and in this he drew from Durkheim's discussion of its existence it formed a separate and largely of the sacred and the profane. But these issues of self-contained sub-universe both economically sacredness and profanity become even more and politically" (Hobsbawm 1994:374). Because complex in the case of visitors traveling to the of changes in Polish politics the most important Auschwitz museum, not only because of the transfommtions in the museum that have taken specific (and different) religious issues involved place in relation to international pressures have for both Jewish and Catholic visitors, but also only began in the late 1980s. because ofthe agreed upon sacredness of the 8 In fact, it dates back to the time of the war. In dead. References to this sacredness abound, and I 1944 one of the camp's prisoners who later . believe that this intense affect is related both to became an important member ofthe museum's the force with which the different national and staff made the first sketches of a future identity projects that surround the museum are monument in Birkenau following the orders of a capable of fueling themselves, and to the leader from the resistance movement (Rawecka problematic definition of the museum visitor. As and Rawecki 1997: 13). Right after the war, a Cohen had noted, there is a general agreement group of former prisoners began to organize and that a tourist is one who "travels for pleasure" take care of what remained of the camp (1974:529). This defmition is undoubtedly linked (Szymanski 1997:45). These ex-prisoners were to the difficulty of conceptualizing the visitors to not state officials, but their actions were the museum as tourists (and is also, in my view, continuously limited and governed by the state, related to the issue of the legitimacy of deriving and the Ministry of Culture and the Arts was the any kind ofpleasure from Holocaust-related body to eventually step in and make official staff experience, even fiction, hence Adorno's appointments. The relationship between the staff statement "poetry after Auschwitz is an act of and the Polish state was complex, because staff barbarity"). Sensitivities to the term "tourists" members sought government funding, while differ greatly. Some use 'visitors' and 'tourists' resisting some ofthe government's imposed interchangeably, while others (me included) are interpretation of the camp's significance. In that guilty of enjoying the shock value derived from early period, before the structuring ofthe using the term 'tourists' in relation to the museum has been firmly established there was Holocaust. Still others are absolutely averse to more flexibility in terms of the presentation of using this term. And while museum staff and the camp and the ambivalence of the state other observers are always concerned that some museum relationship was expressed in it. While visitors (especially teenagers) enjoy themselves in accordance with state ideology visits to inappropriately, this reproach is irrelevant Birkenau later stopped for a long while, in the because the is question cannot be settled by an early period museum guides were taking visitors ought answer, and so the question persists -- are I
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fIrst to Birkenau and from there to Auschwitz specifIc, controlled, ideological massage when (ibid.). Yet soon enough the training of guides the site was confIned to a more limited area became formalized, and they were being (Dwork and Jan van Pelt 1996:360). educated in courses co-organized by the Ministry It is diffIcult to point out which is the cause and of Culture and the Arts. The Museum was which the effect in tefll1S ofthese developments, offIcially opened on June 14, 1947, on the yet it is clear the museum's grounds being anniversary of the arrival of the fIrst transport of bounded in such a way, allowed for the "Arbeit Polish political prisoners to Auschwitz. The Macht Frei" arch to become a major symbol of number of museum visitors was initially capped the Holocaust, while in fact, "very few ofthe at 50,000 by the concerned museum director. Jews deported to Auschwitz ever saw that The ceremonies were led by Polish Premier Jozef gate"(ibid.:360-36 1). Another important thing to Cyrankiewicz, himself an Auschwitz survivor. note is that the reconstructed crematorium just 9 While the following information is not divulged by outside the museum in which the offIcial tour of the museum itself, right from its fIrst moments as a the camp traditionally concludes is hardly ever post-Nazi camp, the camp which was preserved as presented as a postwar reconstruction to the the museum in Auschwitz was physically different visitors. History, therefore, never stood still for from the one that operated under Nazism. Not only the museum to capture its traces, not even in the t did the fleeing Nazis bomb the gas chambers and latter's fIrst moments. However, as we will see, r. crematoria, and burned dozens of barracks, but when the museum staff is currently trying to address the Red Army liberated Auschwitz, the Soviet these very issues of historical soldiers, to prevent the spread of disease, also burned (mis )representation. a: down several of the barracks at Birkenau, while local 10 Young related these developments in a similar I Poles dismantled yet others as they searched for building materials and fIrewood. Many other way: "In fact, without the traditional pillars of barracks as well as most of the portable stables at Torah, faith, and language to unify them, the Birkenau were dismantled and taken away to shelter majority of Jews in America have turned construction crews in Warsaw. Other changes increasingly to the holocaust as their vicariously occurred during the months that the Polish Red Cross shared memory. This preoccupation with the Camp Hospital operated in the fornler Auschwitz Holocaust may have led, in turn, to the massive camp, and housed patients in post-camp buildings, outpouring of support for Israel in May 1967 and still more alterations took place simply because when the Jewish state seemed threatened with people were stealing camp property. Yet these are destruction. For many Jewish Americans, the not the only alterations. In fact, while there are no point of common identifIcation with the Jews of indications to that effect, the museum's visitor center Israel seemed to lie in their potential destruction" stands where the camp itself already existed in 1945. (1993:348).
Most visitors assume that the main building which II In relation to this Young wrote: "When Israel houses the restaurant, the cafeteria, the cinema and came to be perceived as less a potential victim, it the book shop was built after 1945, but in fact it is also became less a source of identity and pride the very same building that used to serve as the among American Jews. And as identifIcation prisoners' reception center, housing a delousing with Israel waned during the late 1970s, reaching installation as well as nineteen structures for its nadir during the Lebanon war, the other half disinfecting clothing, a laundry, and a bathhouse for of secular Jewish identity - Holocaust the prisoners. Moreover, the point where one now Memory-assumed a greater proportion of enters the parking lot used to be the main entrance to Jewish time and resources" (1993:348) the living area ofthe camp. In front of it, visible from between trees and a concrete wall and off-limits for 12 Yet there is another way to see this focus on tourists are stucco structures that belonged to the Holocaust, one that sees it as a shift from Auschwitz but that are now used as low income Israel and towards the Holocaust not as a way of housing and as military quarters for the Polish army: encouraging Israel, but as one motivated both by a disappointment with Israel and by a There was a crippling lack of housing in fashionable American search of ethnicity (Seidel Poland in 1945, and these structures were 1996:39). spacious, well-built, intact and available for immediate occupancy. Then too, it was easier 13 It is interesting to note that the same building to transform the camp into a museum with a has been a theater before the war, and that it
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functioned as a storehouse during the war only because plans to transform it into an SS casino were never carried out, (Dwork and Jan van Pelt 1996:369).
14 While the Americans were contributing to the rise in number of visitors to the museum, it is also false to present the Poles as interested in as many visitors as possible for financial or political events. In fact, quite early on people were voicing their concern as to the danger that Auschwitz will be turned into a "historical circus" (Rawecka and Rawecki 1997: 15).
15 It is interesting to note that in Orbis Invites You, a brochure describing touristic excursions in Southeastern Poland, printed by Poland's most famous travel agency, and handed to visitors nowadays, the camp is described as the place in which more than 4 million persons lost their lives (n.d.).
16 This claim is supported by the fact that in the first half of 1998 alone 32 film and television crews came to the museum and filmed, among other things, material for short films about tourism in Poland. Similarly a considerable section is dedicated to Auschwitz in guide books, and the inscriptions on buses and in brochures, positioning Auschwitz between touristic visits to the salt mines and to Zakopane suggest the same, see photocopies.
17 It is interesting to note as far as reception is concerned that even "[t]hough former [Polish] prisoners may have been marginalized in the context of the ceremonies, a public opinion survey taken in the weeks before commemoration revealed that many Poles still identified with much of what this older generation represented. Forty seven percent of those polled believed that Auschwitz was primarily a place of Polish martyrdom, while only 8 percent believed that most of its victims were Jews" (Steinlauf 1997:141).
18 The first March of the Living was organized to include thousands of Jewish school children from across North America and Israel. The event was so successful that rabbis who participated as group leaders have begun taking their congregations on similar pilgrimages, and the event has been repeated for other school children (Kugelmass 1994: 179, note 16). See further discussion of the MOTL in the second part of this paper.
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