Should Auschwitz be left to decay?

[cali]

On the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day, two experts on Auschwitz argue for and against the idea that the former Nazi death camp should be allowed to crumble away.

Historian Robert Jan Van Pelt says that once the last survivor has died it should be left for nature to reclaim, and eventually forgotten.

But former Polish Foreign Minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, once an inmate, says Auschwitz must be preserved to bear witness to the fate of its victims.


ROBERT JAN VAN PELT, HISTORIAN AND AUTHOR

Many Auschwitz survivors have told me that a visit to the camp can teach little to those who were not imprisoned there.
Their view is best summarised in the text of Alain Resnais' celebrated movie Night and Fog (1955), written by the camp survivor Jean Cayrol. As the camera pans across the empty barracks, the narrator warns the viewer that these remains do not reveal the wartime reality of "endless, uninterrupted fear". The barracks offer no more than "the shell, the shadow".

Should the world marshal enormous resources to preserve empty shells and faint shadows?

Certainly, as long as there are survivors who desire to return to the place of their suffering, it is appropriate that whatever remains of the camps is preserved

<snip>

WLADYSLAW BARTOSZEWSKI, CHAIRMAN OF THE INTERNATIONAL AUSCHWITZ COUNCIL
The only people with a full and undeniable right to decide the future of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial are the hundreds of thousands murdered in this concentration camp.


The prisoners whom I met as prisoner number 4427, when I was detained in Auschwitz between September 1940 and April 1941, are among them.

To some I owe my survival. They saved me, guided not only by the impulse of the heart, which was heroic at the time. They also believed that the survivors will bear witness to the tragedy which in Auschwitz-Birkenau became the fate of so many Europeans.

Thus I and numerous former prisoners fulfil the testament of the victims and convey to subsequent generations the truth about those days.

But the moment when there will be no more eyewitnesses left is inexorably approaching. What remains is the belief that when the people are gone, "the stones will cry out".

<snip>
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7827534.stm

Really interesting perspectives, and the comment section is also pretty compelling.

[truebrit71]

1. The simple answer to that question is NO. It needs to stand for eternity...

...

[DesertFlower]

2. i agree. nt

[cali]

4. I don't know. I actually thought both arguments were pretty persuasive

though if I had to choose, I'd agree that it should be maintained.

[devilgrrl]

5. I agree.

And don't know at the same time.

[emilyg]

15. As a survivor of Hitler - I agree with you 100%.

[Forkboy]

3. It'll never just be another piece of land. Preserve it.

[Idealism]

6. Preserve it

Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. No one in their right mind would want that land, I'd hope, either.

[SidneyCarton]

17. I agree, call me superstitious, but the bad mojo associated with that place is tremendous.

[justabob]

7. no... soon there will be no living survivors

Something must be kept to bear witness, as others have said. We should *never* be allowed to forget the horrors that happened behind that gate.

[cali]

8. well, in fairness to the author of the first piece

quoted, he makes the point that there are many museums, memorials, etc.

[justabob]

21. true

I just don't think it is quite the same.

Slightly ot, but part of why I feel the way I do.... Our local Holocaust museum has one of the transport boxcars and it served as the entrance to the museum. You had to walk throuh the car to get inside the museum. I don't think I have ever been so emotionally affected by any exhibit anywhere as I was by those few moments inside that boxcar. When the museum moved they stopped using the car in the same way and I think that was a mistake. No new visitors will have that same expereince of being completely srrounded in that small space.... even with just 5 or so people it was claustrophobic, to imagine 100 people wall to wall in bitter cold made me sob. I can't imagine you get the same feeling just peering in the door, or looking at a boxcar from a distance.

Even though the camp is a much nicer place now than it was, and much of the horror has been scrubbed from it (like the feces, blood and human decomp from the boxcar)you cannot get the same experience looking at photos. IMHO

[ogneopasno]

9. No. It needs to be preserved as a reminder and as proof. Besides, what on earth would you build

there anyway? I have visited Dachau and it was one of the more powerful things I've ever experienced. There simply are no words.

[Are_grits_groceries]

10. I feel it should be preserved.

However, I don't think I am the one who should have a huge say. Those who were there and their relatives should have the most weight behind their wishes.

[Hubert Flottz]

11. Tear it down...

The GOP will build another one within 50 years if Obama and congress don't put the neocons away for their war crimes. They'll be back and the next time they won't be as easy going.

[Thothmes]

18. Just like FDR's

[izquierdista]

12. It should be left to decay

This is a tough one, but I have to side with Van Pelt. Memories are for memorials and museums. It's enough to remember what happened through photographs and memorabilia, and let the poor little town of Oswiecim return to normalcy for the people who live there now.

[SidneyCarton]

19. Even if you tore it down...

Oswiecim would never return to normalcy. Bodies buried in unmarked graves are still there underneath the surface, awaiting the next person with a spade. Better to remember and be prepared when one digs, than to be shocked every time one looks into the past.

[BlooInBloo]

13. Preserve it - history is the first thing forgotten.

[Staph]

14. I toured Auschwitz in the summer of 2007.

It was one of the most disturbing days of my life. The memories of what I saw are still with me, and I expect that they will be with me for the rest of my days.

It should be maintained forever.

[SidneyCarton]

16. I'm of two minds on this one...

On the one hand, the preservation of Auschwitz is the preservation of a monument to humanity's capacity for evil and destruction. While it may not be in any intentional, it is a commemoration of the SS and their work, and anyone sick enough to celebrate the "Black Order's" racial policy cannot help but point toward Auschwitz as a monument to the dedication of the Third Reich. In light of such ideas, one would be justified in blotting Auschwitz off the face of the earth.

On the other hand, very soon there will be no one left who will be able to testify first-hand to the horrors perpetrated there. The facilities will stand as the last mute witnesses to the horrible work of death done there. Holocaust-deniers are already beginning to re-enter the mainstream, and we can expect them to continue coming out of the woodwork during the next generation. Preserving Auschwitz as an awful, horrifying witness to the Holocaust is one way of countering the specious claims of ignorant men who seek to minimize a massive crime to which they were not witnesses.

[DURHAM D]

20. I visited Auschwitz in 1979.

Myself and my partner were the only Americans there that day. Most of the visitors appeared to be Russian.

The hand lettered signs in the visitors center were written in Polish, Russian and German (I think - fuzzy memory) - but none in English. As I was reading down the list of groups and the number that had been exterminated and got down to the Pink triangle, for the first and only time in my life I actually heard the hair raise on the back of my neck as it scrapped on my shirt collar. I ran outside, followed by my partner, as we both gasped for air and waited for our hearts to stop pounding as we realized that it could have been us wearing the pink triangles.

My point, I had visited other camps and have since visited the Holocaust museum in D.C. and nothing has ever affected me in such a profound way as that visit to Auschwitz on a beautiful summer day in 1979. I will never forget the experience. It needs to be maintained and millions more people need to visit.

[Dukkha]

22. considering how many try to deny it's existence

It needs to stay as a permanent reminder

[DRoseDARs]

23. Should certain Aztec or Mayan sites be left to decay?

Human sacrifices were conducted at a number of sites in Mesoamerica. Their perpetrators and victims are long-dead. Centuries from now, records of what went on at Auschwitz might likewise be few or non-existent. The site's existence may prove to be the only archaeological testament of what went on there.

[Book Lover]

24. Do as you will; Time will have her say

n/t

[Mike 03]

25. Wow, I'm torn. Robert Jan van Pelt along with his co-author Deborah Dwork wrote the

most detailed and frightening and thorough book ever written about Auschwitz (AUSCHWITZ: 1270 TO THE PRESENT). To give you some idea, this book even reprints the blueprints for the concentration camp. It is absolutely chilling to see these documents.

So I respect this man's opinion highly. However, I disagree. A number of friends of mine have actually visited Auschwitz who were not survivors, were not related to survivors, but were practically traumatized with emotion by the experience. I would love to visit that place and in some way reckon with a chapter in history that--although I have studied it in depth--I still can't understand.

The unfathomable is made real by being able to visit the location where these things have happened. Over the years, it has been important to me to visit certain locations where things have happened. Such as losing a friend to a murder. I wasn't murdered, but I HAD to visit the place where she was killed for my own sanity. It settled something inside of me to be able to do that.

[conscious evolution]

26. Never Forget. Never Again. Ever.

Preserve.