young american journalists in germany and...

YOUNG AMERICAN JOURNALISTS IN GERMANY AND POLAND

INTERNATIONAL SUMMER ACADEMY

THE FACES OF JUSTICE

AUSCHWITZ ALBUM REVISITED

ISSN 1899-4407ISSN 1899-4407

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no. 31 July 2011

EDITORIAL BOARD:Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine

Editor:Paweł SawickiEditorial secretary: Agnieszka Juskowiak-SawickaEditorial board:Bartosz BartyzelWiktor BoberekJarek MensfeltOlga OnyszkiewiczJadwiga Pinderska-LechArtur SzyndlerColumnist: Mirosław GanobisDesign and layout:Agnieszka Matuła, Grafi konTranslations: David R. KennedyProofreading:Beata KłosCover:Rebecca LimPhotographer:Paweł Sawicki

PUBLISHER:

Auschwitz-BirkenauState Museum

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:

Kasztelania

www.kasztelania.pl

State HigherVocational School in Oświęcim

www.pwsz-oswiecim.pl

Editorial address:„Oś – Oświęcim, Ludzie, Historia, Kultura”Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenauul. Więźniów Oświęcimia 2032-603 Oświęcime-mail: [email protected]

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Last month, the Jewish Center host-ed 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 Univer-sity in New York. In this issue of Oś, we are publishing their texts, which were the effect of the ten-day pro-gram. To start with, we have chosen general refl ections and descriptions of the entire visit, as well as a text written by Eugene Kwibuka from Rwanda, who, in a particularly emo-tional manner, wrote about Ausch-witz in the context of the genocide experienced within his own country.

On the Museum pages, you will fi nd 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 fi ancé Maksymilian Lohman, who were im-prisoned in Auschwitz in 1943. Fam-ily members of the former prisoners donated these priceless heirlooms. Within this Oś, we also summarize the fi rst International Summer Acad-emy, which was prepared for teach-ers from abroad by the International Center for Education about Ausch-witz and the Holocaust; as well as report on a visit to the Memorial Site by members of the International Council of Christians and Jews.

For the third time, a group of stu-dents attending the School of Man-agement of Public Organizations of North Rhine-Westphalia, have come to Oświęcim on a study visit. Why is it so important for future Ger-man offi cials to visit the Memorial

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 ex-hibition at the International Youth Meeting Center. For the fi rst time in Poland, the works of Pat Mercer Hutchens are on display. In total this includes twenty-fi ve reproductions of oil paintings, which are an artis-tic and literary interpretation from the infamous Auschwitz Album. We also encourage you to take a close look at the second part of the guide-book created by the Jewish Center dealing with the Jewish history of Oświęcim.

Paweł SawickiEditor-in-chief

[email protected]

EDITORIAL

A GALLERY OF THE 20TH CENTURY

Here is one, short artistic and biographically based subject! Re-cently, I watched, notably, not the fi rst time a fi lm on a public televi-sion channel... broadcast on by a paid provider, a Soviet-Japanese fi lm, which was made in 1975, entitled Dersu Uzala that was di-rected by the Japanese maestro Akira Kurosawa, who was award-ed an Oscar! Today I am also once again reading the book by Vladimir Arsenyev, Along the Us-sury Land, that forms the basis of the screenplay for the riveting fi lm.Here in Poland, it was published in the darkest period of the Sta-linist 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 adven-tures, from the terrible reality of that time.

Siberia, the Ussury Country, as well as borderlands of Russia and China. Hunters and trappers, rob-bers and villains, Siberian taiga, na-ture, 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 fi lm that is luckily recog-nized and honored as such! And its ending, I view in a psychological and stylistic context together with the last scenes ofthe fi lm Amadeus by Miloš Forman!

Andrzej Winogrodzki

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The book by Władimir K. Arseniew Along the Ussury Land, that was the basis for the Kurosawa movi Dersu Uzala

Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 31, July 2011

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Auschwitz-Birkenau State MuseumOś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 31, July 2011

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The participants, Jews and Christians of various de-nominations, walked from the main gate and along the camp ramp (unloading plat-form) 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

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 aware-ness of the obligation to work for a better future in which we can live together as broth-ers and sisters.”After the Jewish prayer of mourning, El Male Rachamim, and the saying of the Kad-dish, the participants lighted candles in silence. Guests from 27 countries in-cluding Palestine and Saudi Arabia toured the grounds of the former Auschwitz German camp, visited the Franciscan monastery in Harmęże with its Laby-rinths of Memory exhibition by former Auschwitz pris-oner Marian Kołodziej, and took part in workshops and learned about the educa-tional work of institutions gathered around the Memo-rial including the Interna-tional Center for Education

about Auschwitz and the Holocaust at the Auschwitz-Birkenau 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 out-standing role of John Paul II in the Polish-Jewish dialogue was emphasized during the

meetings. There was also discussion of the shaping among the younger genera-tion of responsible attitudes in relation to Jews. Professor Stanisław Krajewski, a phi-losopher and co-chairman of the Polish Council of Chris-tians and Jews, stated that the rise in the number of ti-tles 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 trou-bled history, and this makes

it possible to build relations of trust. I see improvement in this dialogue because Po-land 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 docu-ment issued by the Confer-ence of the Polish Episco-pate, Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki of Poznań said that there is still too little shaping of responsible attitudes in re-lation to Jews in homilies and the teaching of the catechism. “We feel uneasy about the recurrence, time after time, of signs of associating Jews with all the worst things,”

said Gądecki. “Such a harm-ful 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 Pro-fessor Hans Herman Hen-rix of Germany, two former chairman of the Polish Epis-copate Commission for Di-alogue with Judaism, Arch-bishop Henryk Muszyński

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 con-ference. Members of the Or-ganizing Committee includ-ed both co-chairmen of the Polish Council of Christians

and Jews—Father Wiesław Dawidowski and Professor Stanisław Krajewski—and Professor Zdzisław Mach of the Jagiellonian University.The fi rst meeting of the in-ternational Council of Chris-tians and Jews was held in Warsaw in 1994.

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“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.”

Participants of the International Council of Christians and Jews meeting

Members of the International Council of Christians and Jews visited the Auschwitz Memorial for the fi rst time in the history of the organization. On July 5, the group of more than a hundred people from 27 coun-tries 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.

WE ARE HERE TOGETHER

“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

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 pris-oners, 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 wit-nessed 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 fi rst 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 fi lls me with sadness. I feel the deep wound that we infl icted 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 half-way 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 na-tions, 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 refl ection 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 vic-tims 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.

Members of the Council at the Remembrance Trail

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Alicja Białecka, head of the program section at the In-ternational Center for Edu-cation 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 concentrat-ed more on training specifi c groups of educators as part of its cooperation with insti-tutions like the Council of Europe or the Yad Vashem Memorial Institute in Israel. “The seminar is something completely new in our edu-cational work. It is targeted at English-speaking indi-viduals. Until now, these people have not had the op-tion of being taught directly by us at the Education Cent-er on the grounds of the Me-morial,” said Białecka. José Velasco of Arizona is on his third trip to the Auschwitz Museum. He said that he came the fi rst time as an ordinary tour-ist and the second time in a student group. This time, he came to prepare himself better for imparting the his-tory of Auschwitz to new groups of young people with whom he plans to re-turn in the near future. “My fi rst trip to Ausch-witz was like gazing into the past. However, I also

learned that we cannot limit ourselves to this. What once happened here can also make us able to pre-vent similar events now. The roots of Auschwitz lie in intolerance and we re-ally should teach our young people, in particular, to be tolerant of others. In Ari-zona 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

are the same,” said Velasco. For Nora Fischbach-Hir-shbein of Venezuela, the Academy was a powerful experience. During the Hol-ocaust, 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 tat-tooed on his arm. That’s why it was so important for me to take part in this

seminar, in order to under-stand the origins of my own family history better and learn about what happened here,” she said. While not-ing the high standard of the lectures and the commit-ment of the organizers, she also stressed that attend-ing 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

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 in-cluded a series of lectures and discussions on subjects connected with Auschwitz and its postwar history, Polish-German relations during the war, and the ed-ucational challenges facing the Auschwitz Museum, the world’s best known Memo-rial site and the symbol of the Holocaust, in the future. Alicja Białecka confi rmed that the program will be continued. “This fi rst Inter-national 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 Sum-mer Academy each year. The positive reactions by the participants seem to indicate that the program we put together is optimal: a well balanced combina-tion of an encounter with the original historical place, with the memorial, and with the Museum as an in-stitution, along with the knowledge shared by the staff of this institution and the invited guests.”

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The fi rst 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.

THE FIRST INTERNATIONALSUMMER ACADEMY

Participants of the Summer Academy welcomed by Alicja Białecka, head of the ICEAH Program Section

Participants of the Summer Academy visiting the site of the former Auschwitz I camp

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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 repre-sent various incidents from the history of Italy in the 1930s and 1940s. The design-

ers stated that the fi nal sec-tion was supposed to be an apotheosis of positive colors signifying victory over the time of contempt and perse-cution.This type of exhibition can be categorized as art for art’s

sake and would be referred to in a gallery of contempo-rary 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

is connected with remem-brance, education, and mak-ing the younger generation aware of the tragedy of the victims of the Shoah and the concentration camps, as well as encouraging people to refl ect upon their personal responsibility for the world around them and its future.The organizers of the closed exhibition, the Italian ANED association, have been re-minded regularly over the years about the fact that the

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 ex-hibition in the future that will meet the requirements set by the International Auschwitz Council and the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.

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Krzysztof Antończyk, the head of the Digital Repository of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum said, “These historical documents will be stored in specially construct-ed and climate controlled storage facilities, under the professional oversight by ar-chivists and conservators.” They will be valuable addi-tions, making the Museum’s collection more complete

as well as providing more knowledge about the fate of Auschwitz prisoners. Thanks to the descriptions of indi-viduals and events by the au-thors, 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 analy-sis, 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 selfl essness in providing help to fellow prisoners. After es-caping from a column of pris-oners during the evacuation,

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 suf-fered in the concentration camp, he actively participated in the process of Polish-Ger-man reconciliation. In 1965, he translated a famous let-ter 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 occu-pational forces about clandes-tine meetings of the under-ground resistance movement

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 offi cers. Rodryg Romer was an offi cer, a reservist, of the Polish Army in Wadowice.

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The 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 fi ancé 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.

ORIGINAL CONCENTRATION CAMP LETTERS WRITTEN BY PRISONERS HAVE BEEN

PRESENTED TO THE AUSCHWITZ MEMORIAL SITE ARCHIVES

ITALIAN EXHIBITION AT THE AUSCHWITZ MUSEUM CLOSED

From July 2011, the Italian exhibition at the Auschwitz Memo-rial 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.

Handing over of the camp letters

Italian Exhibition

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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 fi rst 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 pre-pare 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.

NATIONAL EXHIBITIONS

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 Mu-seum 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.

AN APPEAL FOR THE DONATION OF CAMP DOCUMENTS


Twenty-fi ve reproductions of oil paintings are artistic interpreta-tions 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 fi rst time in Poland.

AUSCHWITZ ALBUM REVISITED—AN EXHIBIT OF WORK

BY PAT MERCER HUTCHENS

In a monolithic style and range of warm earth tones, the paintings focus on a perspective, individual, or group that the artist has specifi cally chosen. This technique, frequently deep-ened by a very personal comment, makes the exhibit Auschwitz Album Revisited

exceptionally emotional. Hutchens focuses on a cer-tain 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 ca-tastrophe, this information creates short-lived empa-thy. However, when we can identify with the vic-tims, these feelings become deeper and more tangible. Within Pat Hutchens series, the people immortalized on the photographs from the Auschwitz Album are tell-ing 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

a way, separating us from them by a delicate fog—the paintings show their sub-jects 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

by the words of the artist, who clearly explains to the viewer about the individu-al’s eventual fate. Pat, whose faith is deep, believes that these crimes will not go un-noticed and their perpetra-tors will one-day face their fi nal judgment. The exhibition was organ-ized by the International Youth Meeting Center in association with The Jeru-salem 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 accompany-ing her, a sizable delegation from the United States. The exhibition was available for viewing at the IYMC until the end of July.

Joanna Klęczar

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 offi cial record for higher ranked offi cials), was discovered by Lilly Jacob in one of the warehouses of the liberated Concentration Camp of Dora. There are a total of 193 photo-graphs, 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.

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.

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PAT MERCER HUTCHENS

Was born in Winnfi eld, Louisiana. She is a gradu-ate 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 theol-ogy from Louisiana Baptist University. The main fo-cuses of her scholarship are languages, especially Le-vantine Arabic, and Jewish Studies.She has been a teacher of painting, printing tech-niques, drawing, and the fundamentals of design at several schools: the Corco-ran College of Art and De-sign in Washington, George Mason University, North-ern Virginia Community Colleg, Lord Fairfax College in Middletown, and the Do-minion Theological Seminary. Not only is she the direc-tor, 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 donat-ing her works to be auctioned as well as supports founda-tions which help children. She paints portraits and land-scapes. 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.

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VernissageVernissage


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Almost 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.

THE SECOND POLISH NATIONWIDE CONFERENCE

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FACES OF JUSTICE. AUSCHWITZ AND THE HOLOKAUST AGAINST THE BACKDROP OF GENOCIDE DURING THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Among the participants there were: 5 professors, 20 PhDs and 14 doctoral students. Represented were the univer-sities of Cracow, Warsaw, Wrocław, Poznań, Katowice, Lublin, Kielce, Sieradz, and Oświęcim.

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.

The conference was opened by ICEAH director Krystyna Oleksy and the MDSM Foundation Board chairman Dr. Alicja Bartuś

Participants of the conference

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 fi rst person

who was ever sentenced for the crimes of genocide.

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.

Krystyna Oleksy, the director of the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust, empha-sized the need for universal education of not only facts, but also the causes and meth-ods the crimes are carried out. “Our institution accomplishes these goals through intensive work with teachers and edu-cators, as well as young peo-ple from Poland and abroad,” she said.In turn, Alicja Bartuś, Presi-dent of the Board of the In-ternational Youth Meeting Center, noting the crimes committed in the twentieth century, talked about what was going on in the modern world: “There are still ar-eas, where for years crimes against humanity are perpe-trated, where public execu-

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 pub-lish a book this year, which includes the most noteworthy lectures and refl ections from the conference.The conference was organ-ized in cooperation with: the Foundation for the Interna-

tional Youth Meeting Center in Oświęcim, the Internation-al Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust

at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, as well as with the Oświęcim Acade-

my, the Historical Institute at the Pedagogical University, and the Center for Holocaust

Studies at the Jagiellonian University.

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Jewish Center

Below we publish the second part of the fi rst 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 educa-tors. On the next page of the magazine you can fi nd the city map with all the objects on it.

OSHPITZIN. A GUIDE

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DRUKS FAMILY HOUSE

The building at 4 Cho-pin Street belonged to the Druks family. Built in the 1930s, it stood out from the architecture of Oświęcim as the only building in-spired by the Bauhaus

style. It was also known for being the fi rst house with a fl at roof. Dr. Iro Druks was an attorney, a mem-ber of the town council, and a prominent member of the Zionist Revisionist movement in Poland. His wife, Łucja Liebermann, was born to a family of Oświęcim industrialists; her parents were Joachim

Liebermann, co-owner of Emil Kuźnicki Roofi ng Pa-per Factory (est. 1888), and Józefi na. Iro and Łucja had two children, Adam (1930-1996) and Elinoar (b. 1935). Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, the Druks and Liebermanns fl ed Oświęcim, heading east-ward fi nding themselves in Palestine in 1942 after many dramatic circum-stances.

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CHURCH OF OUR LADY OF SORROW

The construction and con-secration of the church and the adjacent Seraphite con-

vent took place in 1899. The church, built in neo-Gothic style was partly destroyed during WW2 and recon-structed afterwards.

MEZUZAH (Hebrew: doorframe) A piece of parchment placed in a decorative case on a door-frame. 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 (He-brew: Hear O Israel the Lord is Our God, the Lord is One) and two associated passages.

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MAIN MARKET SQUARE

The present market square was established in Oświęcim during the 16th century. In the same cen-tury, there was a storied town hall and wooden buildings in that area. Ac-cording to an 1867 docu-ment by J. N. Gątkowski, the square had a well, three-storied tenement houses, the monument of St. John of Nepomuk and the storied town hall, which was the seat of lo-cal authorities until World War II. During the war, the main square was partly re-built. In the central part,

a bunker was built (after the war, it was made into the shopping center and recently demolished). An-other sign of the rebuilding are arcades, which still ex-ist at the former Herz Hotel building and at the build-ing in Plebańska Street (op-posite of the Internal Reve-nue 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 pro-duce. In 1941, the square was the main gathering place for local Jews before deportation to the ghettos in Będzin, Chrzanów, and Sosnowiec.

Druks Family House (fi rst on the right), 1930’s

Market day at the Main Square, c. 1935

Main Market Square, 1909 Hasids at the Main Square, 1930’s, photo: Jerzy Wysocki


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Jewish Centerter

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HOUSE OF RABBI ELIYAHU

BOMBACH

From 1900 to 1939 chief Rabbis of Oświęcim were members of the Bombach Family. Osias Pinkas Bom-bach (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 Bom-bach was succeeded by his son Eliyahu (1883-1943), who was previously a rab-

bi in the nearby town of Kęty. Eliyahu Bombach was married to the daughter of Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Saf-frin. 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 Bom-bach’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 mas-ter, teacher) – spiritual lead-er of the Jewish community, learned in Halakhah (rab-binic law) and ordained in a special ceremony called smichah. Rabbis tradition-ally taught, supervised kosher food, mediated disputes and offi ciated at lifecycle events. Rabbis are usually hired by the Jewish community.

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

The page of Eliyahu Bombach’s paper: Kuntres Maane Eliyahu

(Drohobycz, 1896). It was presented during his

bar mitzvah


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FASPE: NEVER FORGET WHAT WAS NEVER REPORTED

DAY TEN: WHAT STAYS WITH US

The 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.

Each moment of this trip has been signifi cant and impacting for us all, in different ways. Though our intellec-tual 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.

But I did reach one other conclusion on my visit: “Af-ter Auschwitz, there must be journalism.” After all, the greatest stain on the prac-tice of journalism in the 20th century was its failure to ad-equately 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 mur-der machine.I was in Eastern Europe leading a group of journal-ism students on an explo-ration 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 Ausch-witz for the Study of Pro-fessional Ethics, known in short as FASPE. Journalists, of course, were not the only professionals who failed. There are also FASPE pro-grams for law and medical students and for seminar-ians 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 cov-ered 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 incit-ed and supported the mur-ders, but the killings were often carried out in a ran-dom 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 estab-lished: 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 be-ings, but like a “product.” “They were washed, killed and destroyed without a trace,” Kwibuka said. “A brutal process.”Before coming to Ausch-witz, our group visited Ber-lin where among the stops was the House of the Wann-see Conference, where, on Jan. 20, 1942, 15 top Nazis met to fi nalize 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 stra-tegic appointments was of Joseph Goebbels as minis-ter for propaganda. Goeb-bels snuffed out any inde-pendent press that existed

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 fi elds.The failures of the American press to tell the story of the Shoah have been richly doc-umented by two scholars: Deborah Lipstadt of Emory University and Laurel Leff of Northeastern Univer-sity. 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 stu-dents 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 smart-phones. The fl ip 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 bury-ing us in gossip. We don’t always focus on genocides taking place in Africa or Asia today because we are too busy updating our Face-book 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 neces-sarily expect to stop des-pots or totalitarian regimes through the program, but he does hope to instill in partic-ipants an ethical sense that will shape their professional careers. “If we see terrible wrongs, it is our job as pro-fessionals to do something about that,” he said.FASPE will be again be tak-ing students from medical, law, theology and journal-ism 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/jour-nalism2011.

Ari L. Goldman is a professor at the Columbia University

Graduate School of Journalism.

Here is a small sample of the most poignant moments for our group. (These impres-sions were grabbed over the last two days in quick inter-views 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 im-agining 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

also said she is fundamen-tally 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 strategi-cally evil. The Holocaust was committed in an organ-ized way.” In contrast, he said, was the chaos of the

genocide in Rwanda. “The way people would be taken in a train and arrive like a product. They were washed, killed and destroyed with-out a trace. A brutal pro-cess.”Gianna said that she saw a quote in the House of Wann-see that really struck her. “Someone was remember-ing how his father would

never cut bread, but rip large clumps because that’s what he learned to do in a concen-tration 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 Unfi nished, we watched be-fore we left New York in

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FASPE project participants at “Gazeta Wyborcza”


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Based on where I’m from —Rwanda—I had a picture of Auschwitz in my head. I fi gured 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 speak-ing 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 hav-ing 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 occu-pation in 1939.I lost many relatives during the genocide in Rwanda and visiting genocide memori-als and refl ecting 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

comfortable as we started our tour with other journal-ism students and I gradu-ally noticed each of us was touched in a unique way by what we saw.We started at the gate of the site which holds Ger-man 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 “gu-kora” 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 oth-er belongings like suitcases and toothbrushes but again this wasn’t much shock for me since I already saw many genocide victims’ belong-ings in Rwanda.But I fi nally saw the worst that still haunts me as I write. I am just having a hard time understanding how the kill-ers came up with effective

technology and more ad-vanced ways in slaughter-ing people. We saw a pic-ture 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 crema-tion 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 coffi n 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 nor-mally an acceptable funeral

procedure among many cul-tures 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 esti-mated 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 infrac-tion, like taking an extra piece of cloth for warmth.

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 to-wards 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 un-derstand why people keep repeating mistakes follow-ing the same steps towards the genocide and many oth-er crimes against humanity. A bit of math shows the gen-ocide 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 refl ections on professional ethics will be a good contribution on the way I handle my work.

Eugene Kwibuka (Rwanda)

I CAN STILL FEEL THE CONFUSION

What do you get when you add confusion to confusion? I defi nitely don’t think get something other than more confusion. My fi rst 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

which the Nazis are dump-ing bodies into a massive grave. “I was struck because it was real and that a per-son was fi lming 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 pre-Holocaust life was impactful. ”After walking through 400 acres of empty buildings in a complex that once impris-oned thousands of innocent people, we ended at this one building fi lled 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 pow-erful 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 hu-man beings we should take responsibility for each other because if you don’t, it con-tinues to happen, like it is now in Sudan, in Rwanda, and in Syria.”Emily said the fi rst time the it really “hit her” was on track 17 because, “It was the fi rst time we were standing where people who went to the camps had stood, hear-ing 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 suit-cases at Auschwitz I. “They

brought all of there things thinking that they were be-ing 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 Mu-seum very powerful. “They highlighted individuals. Like this one letter in Pol-ish 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 Teichwww.faspe.info/journalism2011


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Jewish Center

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Matisyahu, 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.

At 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 offi cers 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.

A STAR OF WORLD MUSIC AT THE OŚWIĘCIM

SYNAGOGUE

AMERICAN SOLDIERS IN OŚWIĘCIM

This special occasion brought over 40 individu-als 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

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 syna-gogue, which, before the Second World War, could be heard in twenty differ-ent places of worship in our town.

Maciek Zabierowski

This year, ten students be-gan their stay in Cracow, where they learned about Jewish and Polish history of the city. They also had the opportunity to hear the testi-mony 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-

diers toured the city and vis-ited the Jewish Center and Synagogue as well as the Jewish Cemetery. A part of their visit included a two-day study visit of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau Concen-tration 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:

Tarnów, Bobowa, and Zakli-czyn, where the cadets visited the only Jewish military cem-etery, from the First World War, in Poland. The program ended with a hike through the beautiful Rusinowa Glade in the Tatra Mountains.

Maciek Zabierowski

From left: AJC director Tomasz Kuncewicz, Matisyahu, Rabbi Michael Schudrich and Efraim Rosenstein

Maintenance work at the Jewish cemetary in Oświęcim

In Bobowa synagogie

Academy Program participants visiting Polish Aviation Museum in Cracow


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For 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 gov-ernment 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 Haus-mann, a lecturer at the School of Management of Public Organizations of North Rhine-Westphalia.

WHY DO FUTURE GOVERNMENT ADMINISTRATORS

FROM GERMANY ORGANIZE STUDY VISITS TO THE MEMORIAL SITE?

What educational op-tions do students of the School of Management of Public Organizations have and what type of employment will they later fi nd in North Rhine-Westphalia?

Gerhard Hausmann: North Rhine-Westphalia is the largest state within the Federal Republic of Germany, with a popu-lation of 18 million indi-viduals. Our school is an institution that educates future government work-ers. This includes offi cials working at the local level (in cities and towns), state administrators (at the county, regional lev-els, and within the Inte-rior Ministry), and those working within the po-lice ranks. Future govern-ment administrators are educated in a variety of fi elds, within appropriate groups, which include law as well as specifi c areas of study (for exam-ple, fi nancial manage-ment, criminology), and this includes education in social studies—and this is where historical education belongs. After three years of study, the graduates fi nd work as

administrative offi cials or as police offi cers.

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 as-pect covered was to be the actions of government administrators during the National Socialist pe-riod. The students should, above all, know how the administrators of that pe-riod gave into the infl u-ence of that ideology and took part in the crimes. A specifi c place in the un-tangling of these events is the role of the police in the Holocaust. To accomplish this goal, various pro-grams and educational materials have been cre-ated. 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-

nars, visits to Memorial Sites take place; among them is a visit of the for-mer Concentration Camp of Auschwitz.

In your opinion, what effect does the visit to the Auschwitz Memo-rial Site have on your students’ thinking and behavior? What do you expect of them?

The visits to the Memo-rial Site leave a very deep and emotional impression on all the participating students. They discuss this long after they have returned from their jour-ney. 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 Memo-rial Site. Recently, only in Münster from nearly 200 students, 111 were cho-sen for the seminar. Un-fortunately, 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-

ences and impressions with their own friends and colleagues, in this way, reminding them-selves about the events that took place under the rule of the National So-cialists.

How are you personally affected by your regular visits to the Memorial Site and what meaning does each following visit have for you?

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 Memo-rial Site seven times and each time I fi nd 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 passion-ately young people get

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 dispar-ity. When it comes to stu-dents, 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, es-pecially 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 vis-its to the Auschwitz Me-morial Site.

Interview by: Bogumił Owsiany

Students from North Rhine-Westphalia with Wilhelm Brasse, a former Auschwitz prisoner

GERHARD HAUSMANN

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. Previ-ously, 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, mean-ing around seven thousand individuals.

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Oś—Oświęcim, People, History, Culture magazine, no. 31, July 2011 Center for Dialogue and Prayer Foundation

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Culture

The educational project Auschwitz in Literature has come to an end. Its participants had been the students of Powia-towy Zespół Szkół Ekonomiczno-Gastronomicznych [The County Economic and Gastronomical Schools] Num-ber 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 fi rst prize is presented below.

AUSCHWITZ IN LITERATURE—THE WINNING ENTRY

Batsheva Dagan, The Birth-day Present. A poem writ-ten about a poem written in Auschwitz.

Poetry allows one to talk about the simplest things in a refi ned and embellished manner, but it also allows one to present their most dif-fi cult experiences in the sim-plest words that are the most to the point. In the poem The Birthday Present by Batsheva Dagan, the latter charac-teristic 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, hon-est, and one which gives the poem a signifi cantly expres-sive 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-

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 Sz-pigelman, who was deported to Auschwitz in 1943 and lost her life in the gas chamber the same year. The Birthday Pre-sent memorializes this indi-vidual as well as the specifi c 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 ir-regular number of lines. The fi rst stanza only describes the event that will be later mentioned and draws atten-tion to the place where it oc-curred, in other words, the concentration camp and its conditions, while in the sec-ond stanza an explanation of the gift mentioned in the title appears:

What was this, soon I will tell you:This was a drawing,A slice of breadAnd a poem.

The next stanza sheds fur-ther light about what a special occasion was the receiving—the girl who re-ceived this gift, was notably celebrating her eighteenth birthday, and entering adult-hood. 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 tangi-ble treat that you were able to eat, as opposed to the deli-cacies drawn on the birthday card. What could you actu-ally 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 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, excep-tional, and incomparable.

In the context of the pervad-ing conditions in the con-

centration camp, the whole situation also seems ex-traordinary, when this is an attempt to escape the hope-lessness 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 atten-tion, so that is why while reading The Birthday Present it is important to constantly remember that it happened within a concentration camp,

A place fi lled with contemptFor the human right to life,A place where you measured timeFrom roll-call to roll-call,And the measuring stick wereUnending rows of female prisoners

This fragment, which comes from the fi rst stanza of the poem is remarkably simple, yet, at the same time perfect-ly illustrates that within the world of the camp, human actions, values, and behavior, had been stripped of their nat-ural sense. That sense could

not exist, because the concen-tration 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, forc-ing them to accept the rhythm of camp life, connected with further roll-calls, labor, and, inevitably, with selections.

There is nothing unusual that in such an inhuman

reality, dreams as well as wants are both the sim-plest and most important. These were dreams about a decent and nutritious meal—like the one on the birthday card—and about a “life without fear.” This is exactly what the girl tell-ing the story in the poem was dreaming of, as was her good friend, Zosia, who

had given the extraordinary present.

The entire poem, to a great extent, is about the distinc-tion concerning normal life and vegetation within a camp. That, which normally would not draw attention, grows to the rank of a hap-pening, 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 crea-tion that takes on the subject of the Holocaust, especially when their authors are in-dividuals who had lived through and experienced that hell.

The same message can be read in the last two stanzas of the poem. In the penul-timate 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 pa-per that the poem was writ-ten on disappeared “like dust in the air.” All that is left, however, is the poem—metaphorically hidden within the individ-ual 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 treas-ure within her heart would cause the joy for others.”

Zosia could not do this, since—as is stated in the fi nal verse—she “died dur-ing the fi nal part of the jour-

ney.” This is how the story, that was supposed to be a gift, like the poem written by Zosia, ends. Within the poem written at Auschwitz, there is no mention of the grey and terrifying reality of the camp—instead, there are “wishes of joy and a de-sire for a new life in a new world”…

Patrycja Piotrowska

You may ask this question, but today nobody will answer that a slice of bread will make someone happy on her eighteenth birthday.

There is nothing unusual that in such an inhuman reality, dreams as well as wants are both the simplest and most important.

Błogosławiona bądź

wyobraźnio –

przeklęta bądź!

Wspomnienia „Stamtąd”

BATSZEWA DAGAN


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History

In a house not too far from the Birkenau Camp there was supposed to be nothing. Ac-cording to its owners, it was completely searched earlier. Other than the books and just a few other items that I ac-quired 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

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 fam-ily 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

the house during the occupa-tion 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… Impatient-ly, 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: “Leh-mann SS-Rottenführer.” For that reason, I have the nameplate, but who was Ar-thur Lehmann, and what did he do at the camp? This will most probably remain a mys-tery. Today, I wonder if the above-mentioned house may contain some other secrets. I hope that during its disman-tling we will fi nd some more interesting items from the wartime period.

Mirosław Ganobis

Whittled from a piece of wood, the fi gu-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.

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 Pow-iat 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’ im-prisonment as a result.In the fi rst months of the Ger-man occupation, in late De-cember 1939, he attempted to make his way to Hungary, in order to be able to join the Polish army that was form-ing 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 un-der threat of arrest. He soon joined the fi ght against the occupation regime and be-came a member of the Peas-ant underground. He set up a structure to pass news from

foreign radio stations, such as the BBC broadcasts, among the village populace. In Feb-ruary 1940, he and other peasant activists in the Land of Oświęcim began publish-ing a clandestine journal ti-tled Wiadomości Podziemia [Underground News], later renamed Orka [The Plough-share]. The fi rst armed units began forming in the area in late 1940 under the name “Chłostra” (Peasant Watch). Jekiełek became the com-mander. These units formed the foundation of the Peas-ant Battalions (BCh), which formed in 1941. Jekiełek was chosen as commander of the BCh Bielsko Powiat Region. He used many pseudonyms in the underground: “Wo-jtek,” “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 head-quarters. It grouped together a range of people, most of them peasant activists, in-cluding 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 pre-paring 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 prison-ers on the level of the resist-ance movement structure. The prisoners referred to him as “Opiekun” (The Protec-tor). 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 doc-uments may now be found in the Archives of the Aus-chwitz-Birkenau State Muse-um in Oświęcim. The funding designated for the relief effort came from resistance move-ment headquarters, contribu-tions by local civilians, chari-table 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 nation-al headquarters of the Peas-ant Battalions, Anna Szalbót (pseudonym “Rachela”) were

preparing to drop off a ship-ment of “Christmas presents” for the prisoners when they were surprised by a gendar-merie 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 fl ed. 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 fi rst as an offi cer for special missions, and then be-came deputy instructor and head of communication for the Regional Command in the spring of 1943. While in Cra-cow, he remained dedicated to the Auschwitz cause and maintained clandestine con-tact 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 re-sistance movement activists, mostly from the peasant and socialist groupings, in set-ting up the Committee to Aid Concentration Camp Pris-

oners (PWOK), which was formed to organize material aid to the Auschwitz prison-ers and receive documenta-tion of the crimes of the SS.Close relatives of Jekiełek were also involved in the Auschwitz relief effort. Three of them—his brother Fran-ciszek (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 pris-ons, after which they were sent to Auschwitz. Marianna and Teresa died in Ausch-witz, while Franciszek was murdered in Buchenwald.After the end of the war, Wo-jciech Jekiełek was chairman of the board of the Coopera-tive Bank in Kęty. In 1947, the Regional Military Court in Cracow sentenced him to six years’ imprisonment. Freed from prison in 1950, he set-tled in Cracow. He graduated from an external course in economics and administra-tion, and held white-collar jobs in Cracow building en-terprises until retirement. He died on January 15, 1989.Mirosław Obstarczyk

Mirosław Obstarczyk

PEOPLE OF GOOD WILL

VESTIGES OF HISTORYFROM THE COLLECTIONS

OF THE AUSCHWITZ MUSEUM

WOJCIECH JEKIEŁEK (1905-1989)

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In 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-fi fth and thirty-sixth birth-

days. It seemed, then, that this would have been the end of this subject, the two books that contained the dedications. Nothing of the sort!

This physically small, carved fi gurine was most probably found after the War within the former Concentration Camp. It was donated to the Museum Collection by for-mer 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 fi gure is only partially in-tact, however, the carving has lost none of its character. We have before our eyes, carved out of light-wood, a fi gure of a human being giving the impression of hopelessness and abandonment—with arms limp at his sides, in mis-shaped clothing, and enor-mous shoes. There is a lack in specifi c details; the primitive-ness of the silhouette evokes a universalism that intensifi es the message and expression of this artistic creation. This is an individual during his downfall—his grief, his help-lessness, his solitude.

Agnieszka Sieradzka

FROM GANOBIS’S CABINET

Door plaque from Artur Lehmann’s house Figure of a prisoner

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PHOTO JOURNAL

Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE) is the name of a study program pre-pared 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 his-

tory 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 fi nd more information on the subject of the conference and refl ections of its participants. We will later publish photographs taken by seminar participant, Rebecca Lim.

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young american journalists in germany and...

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