but changes implemented at the site beginning in the winter of 1954–55, reflecting the beginning of the post-Stalin “thaw,” breathed new life into the institution. Cold-war tensions had subsided somewhat, Poland and the two German states were becoming settled in their respective blocs, and the memory work at Auschwitz had ceased to be an ideological instigator. Numerous administrative changes were undertaken at the site, the most important of which was the construction of a new exhibition. The fourth chapter therefore analyzes the reasons for these changes, locates them in the context of Polish cultural policy in the early Gomułka era, and proceeds to a detailed analysis of the 1955 exhibition (the vast majority of which is still in use), offering the reader a “visit” to the memorial site.
Although in some respects the 1955 exhibition at Auschwitz symbolized an iconographic and pedagogic return to a “Polish-national” idiom after the Stalinist internationalism of the preceding years, the changes implemented at the site paved the way for increased international involvement in the commemorative landscape and activities at Auschwitz in the second half of the 1950s and throughout the 1960s. This new “internationalization” of the site—the focus of chapter 5—reflected an increase in the museum’s autonomy and added several new “plots” to the Auschwitz story, most prominently, the reinsertion of the Shoah into the iconography and vocabulary of the memorial site. Furthermore, the site’s internationalization illustrated the ways in which its landscape and meaning could be influenced by events well beyond Poland’s borders.
First among the new international influences at the memorial site was the activism of the newly formed International Auschwitz Committee (IAC), an organization for former prisoners of the camp from across Europe. Not only did the IAC influence the landscape and commemorative ritual at Auschwitz; it also initiated a twelve-year effort to erect a massive international monument on the grounds of Birkenau. After a lengthy artistic competition and in spite of tremendous financial barriers, the monument was dedicated in 1967. The following year—more than twenty years after the liberation—the State Museum at Auschwitz opened its first exhibition devoted to the “Martyrology and Struggle of the Jews” in Block 27 of the base camp. This exhibition, although furthering the commemorative diversity at the site, also became a topic of controversy in Poland and abroad, for it was constructed and dedicated at the same time that relations between Poles and Jews were suffering from the repercussions of the Six-Day War and the institutionalized anti-Semitism of the so-called “anti-Zionist campaign.” The exhibition was often closed over the next decade, its inaccessibility a further illustration of the continuing marginalization of Jewish victims at Auschwitz and the role of its museum as a register of domestic and international political concerns.
The 1970s were a relatively tranquil decade for the State Museum at Auschwitz, but as the final chapter explains, forces were underway that would compel the memorial site to respond to an ever-growing variety of commemorative constituencies and external pressures, both domestic and foreign. These forces would converge on the occasion of Pope John Paul II’s visit to Auschwitz in 1979, a turning point in the history of the memorial site. This pilgrimage, on the one hand, marked the triumph of Polish-national (and Polish-Catholic) perceptions of Auschwitz and its legacy. On the other hand, the papal visit further democratized the commemorative space at Auschwitz, legitimized it as an arena for antiestablishment protest, and, in a sense, freed the site from the ideological strictures and politicized cant of previous decades. By “liberating” the memorial site in this way, the pope’s visit was the first stage in the collapse of the memorial framework erected at Auschwitz over the previous thirty-five years and also signaled the advent of controversies and debates over Auschwitz that have been characteristic of the present era.
Foremost among these debates was the highly publicized Carmelite Convent controversy, which brought the problems of contested memory at Auschwitz—along with the burdens of Polish-Jewish relations—into the international public view. Although the controversy, which is addressed briefly in the epilogue, began in the mid-1980s, it belongs thematically to the current era of what some might designate the “postcommunist” memorial site. Heated international exchanges about Jewish, Polish, or international “proprietorship” over the site, the presence of religious symbols at Auschwitz, the use of the grounds and structures of the former camp complex for more “everyday” purposes, a memorial site and museum in full view of the international media—these are phenomena that we associate with the convent controversy, but they are no less characteristic of the site in the 1990s and today. For that reason, the convent controversy is an appropriate vehicle for problematizing the proliferation of memories, competing memorial agendas, and ideological struggles that have emerged in the last decade. Recent conflicts over Auschwitz have not been sudden and spontaneous eruptions of Jewish-Catholic tension or merely a manifestation of animosity between Poles and Jews; rather, they are a reflection and registration of diverse emplotments and historical misunderstandings associated with Auschwitz memory at the site since the 1940s. Thus, the arguments set forth in this study are relevant to the most recent history of the Auschwitz site, and the conclusions suggest both the need for and a path toward further investigation in the years ahead.
Have fifty years made such a difference? Walter Benjamin observed that the dead are not safe from politics,3 and this has certainly held true at Auschwitz, more than half a century after the killing there ceased. Pedagogy and topography, modes of commemoration and reflection at the memorial site remain matters of controversy and debate. Ultimately, the postwar history of Auschwitz reveals the futility of upholding a single commemorative interpretation of the site or seeking any redemptive perspective whatsoever in its history. Despite its efforts, the Polish government repeatedly failed to create a single and common mode of collective memory at Auschwitz. Moreover, increasing numbers of visitors, ongoing research, and new forms of commemorative practice will undoubtedly render public manifestations of Auschwitz memory yet more diverse in the years to come. Can Auschwitz, more than fifty years after its liberation, “speak for itself?” We live in an era of growing interest in the ways in which cultures and states have chosen to recall, commemorate, and distort their pasts, and the shapes and uses of memory at the State Museum at Auschwitz prompt us to reflect upon this question. The site most certainly has its own eloquence, but its meaning will undoubtedly remain subject to both our awareness of its history and the shifting contours of its memorial landscape.
Acknowledgments
THIS WORK REFLECTS THE EFFORTS and contributions of many institutions and individuals in the United States, Poland, and Germany. Research for this study has been supported by a Fulbright-Hays Grant, the Social Science Research Council Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies, graduate fellowships at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Holocaust Educational Foundation, the College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Fund for Faculty Development at the University of Vermont, a grant from the International Advisory Council at the University of Vermont, a University of Vermont Department of History Nelson Grant, and the Center for Holocaust Studies at the University of Vermont.
I am especially grateful to Peter Fritzsche of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who supervised the doctoral dissertation that was the foundation for this study. His creativity and enthusiastic support have been an inspiration to me as a historian and as a teacher. I am also indebted to many mentors and colleagues who have offered their support and critiques at various stages of this work, including Diane Koenker, Paul Schroeder, Harry Liebersohn, Charles Stewart, David Coleman, David Krugler, and Victor Libet at the University of Illinois. Patrick Hutton and Denise Youngblood, colleagues in the department of history at the University of Vermont, have also provided valuable insights on sections of the manuscript. For their advice and support I also thank Kevin Beilfuss, Stanislaus Blejwas, Bogac Ergene, Michael Eversole, Peter Hayes, Katherine Quimby Johnson, David Massell, Wolfgang Mieder, Sybil Milton, Francis R. Nicosia, James Overfield, Kathy Pence, Antony Polonsky, Brian
