A case for
letting nature take back Auschwitz
This leading Holocaust
scholar argues that there would be dignity in
death camp's neglect
Brett Popplewell
Staff Reporter / Toronto Star
THE recent theft and
retrieval of the infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei"
("Work Sets You Free") sign that marks the
gateway into Auschwitz has reignited debate over
what should be done with the sombre monument to
one of humanity's darkest hours.
Last week Poland's culture minister promised
the equivalent of $137,000 for improving
security at the site where more than one million
people died during the Holocaust.
But Robert Jan Van Pelt, an
architectural historian and a leading expert on
Auschwitz, says it may be time to consider other
strategies for the site, which is split into two
camps, Auschwitz and Birkenau. They sprawl over
nearly 500 acres.
Van Pelt, a professor at the University of
Waterloo, suggests the museum consider sealing
off the Birkenau death camp, where 95 per cent
of the murders took place, and letting nature
take over. We asked him to explain.
Why have you have posited that Birkenau
should be closed up and reclaimed by
nature?
There is a present problem of preservation in
Auschwitz. The place that is actually
well-preserved - that's where the museum is. But
the site of Birkenau, a couple kilometres away,
where the murders happened, is falling apart.
That camp was very hastily constructed. The
buildings were built to have a lifespan of two
to three years. They were built from recycled
bricks. When they ran out of recycled bricks,
the SS bought from the German army prefab horse
stables. In 1945, when the war came to an end,
these horse stables were very valuable because
they were kind of instant housing for someone
who needed it. So people had the idea that the
best thing that they could do was to pick up all
of these horse stables - and there's like 500 of
them - take them apart, put them on the train
and send them to Warsaw. By 1948 all of the
brick barracks in Birkenau were already falling
apart. Each of the old horse stables had two
stoves inside with two brick chimneys that were
not taken to Warsaw.
So you had this very weird landscape - and
you still have that - where you get these small,
primitive brick chimneys rising three metres out
of the ground. They don't have any other bracing
and if you have a storm they blow over. But of
course the chimneys themselves - altogether
there are hundreds of them - create a very
powerful symbolic landscape because we associate
Birkenau with the chimneys of the
crematoria.
Those crematoria aren't there anymore, they
were blown up by the Germans and one of them was
blown up by the prisoners in 1944. So because
there are only these ruins of the crematoria and
because people expect to see chimneys in some
way, that field of small chimneys that are the
leftovers of the barracks creates a kind of
landscape that people in some way associate with
the killing and the burning of the bodies of the
victims.
By allowing nature to take over the site,
do we run the risk of allowing humanity to
forget what happened and set the stage for
future questioning of the Holocaust?
Ninety-nine per cent
of what we know we do not actually have the
physical evidence to prove . . . it has
become part of our inherited
knowledge.
I don't think that the Holocaust is an
exceptional case in that sense. We in the future
- remembering the Holocaust - will operate in
the same way that we remember most things from
the past. We will know about it from literature
and eyewitness testimony. . . . We are very
successful in remembering the past in that
manner. That's how we know that Cesar was killed
on the Ides of March. To put the holocaust in
some separate category and to demand that it be
there - to demand that we have more material
evidence - is actually us somehow giving in to
the Holocaust deniers by providing some sort of
special evidence.
Why has the site not been closed off
already?
In 1959, a proposal was made to let nature
take over the camp. The museum wanted to seal
the gates and let everything fall into
disrepair. The idea was that this spot
represented a place where humanity failed in
such a monumental way that we really have no
business maintaining it.
At that time the survivors opposed that
proposal. They said `You cannot lock us out of
our own experience. We suffered here; we need to
be able to return to the site where we
suffered.'
Fifty years later, we are facing the end of
the age of the survivors - the age of the
witnesses - and I think when the last survivor
of the Holocaust has died, when that almost
silent passing happens, we as a civilization or
as a species should mark this.
And (what) if no one was going to provide the
funds to preserve this site? My response to that
challenge is `So what? Maybe it's not so bad if
this site is erased.' But if indeed there is a
moment when we can surrender this site to
nature, we cannot do that before the last
survivor dies.
The chairman of the international
Auschwitz council says the decision should be
left to those who died at Auschwitz. Do we have
any insight - recorded statements from victims
before they died - on what they wanted to be
done with the site?
No. So when you call on the victims to some
way indicate what happened at the site we can
only talk about the survivors. But can survivors
really represent those who died? The survivors
can do that to a degree, but once they are dead
I don't think it's our place to interpret. This
is a decision that we have to take as the
living. The earth belongs to the living. It is
the living that have to make the tough
decisions.
It is fine with me if we the living decide
that this site should be preserved and . . . we
are willing to spend the money to maintain the
site in a proper way . . . that somehow leaves
the dignity of the place intact. I'm not going
to quarrel with that. But that means we as a
worldwide society are actually accepting
responsibility for the site - and putting
resources toward that.
![[]](../../online/std/dings/list.gif){kind=small}
Ninety-nine
per cent of what we know [about Auschwitz]
we do not actually have the physical evidence to
prove
write to David
Irving