REMEMBERING THE UNTHINKABLE IN THE AGE OF NO THINKING

The Writer: Excuse me; we were just wondering you havent seen our tour guide by any chance, have you? Weve not seen him for ages. Think we lost him back over there Tourist 1: No, love, weve lost him too weve just been waiting over here having a cigarette. Tourist 2: Yeah, we couldnt be doing with all that ice and slush weve got mud all on our boots, look Anyways, youve seen one of those huts, youve seen them all really, havent you? The snowy afternoon of 16th March 2010; Asuchwitz-Birkenau Museum at Owicim, Poland *
You who live In your warm houses, You who find, returning in the evening, Hot food and friendly faces : Consider if this is a man Who works in the mud Who does not know peace Who fights for a scrap of bread Who dies because of a yes or no. Consider if this is a woman, Without hair and without name With no more strength to remember, Her eyes empty and her womb cold Like a frog in winter. Meditate that this came about : I commend these words to you. Carve them in your hearts At home, in the street, Going to bed, rising; Repeat them to your children, Or may your house fall apart, May illness impede you, May your children turn their faces from you. If This is a Man (1958), Primo Levi

As science and technology advances, so too does time; the quicker the pace of this progress, the faster time can seem to pass. Distances that once demanded lengthy and uncomfortable journeys to travel now have a minimal impact on the lives of the citizens of a globalised world. As wealth becomes distributed amongst a large and zealous body of consumers across much of Europe, the surge in demand for entertainment and luxury has led to a dizzying extent of selection on offer. At times, this choice can feel overwhelming and never more so than when gliding through a palatial shopping centre or vast hypermarket. The emerging popularity amongst young adults of social networking venues on the Internet has indisputably accelerated the pace at which social interaction takes place, serving to provide immediacy and intimacy in a practical and ultra efficient format, though perhaps artificial. Hyperinflated industries dedicated to tackle boredom and silence- those of video gaming, television and popular literature, to name but three- work tirelessly to bombard the consumer with attractive solutions for their predicament, leaving a wilderness of inane and thoughtless material in their wake. A popular fixation with the present and immediate satisfaction has manifested itself in many ways: the issue of escalating personal debt perhaps demonstrates a sustained attitude of acting without thought for the future implications; increasing instances of obesity suggest a lack of self-control or long-term consideration of health and prevalent social crises of unexpected pregnancies and addiction might in part be explained by this same short-sighted attitude to life. In an international society so centred on the now, few moments remain for the consideration of the past and future; in the frenzied rush to elude stillness and reflection, there is even little time to think very carefully about the present. Our collective consciousness and erratic memory quiver under an unprecedented inundation of information and entertainment. The comfort and velocity of the present make that most difficult and uncomfortable of journeys, the journey to the past, seem unattractive and unnecessary. The Holocaust is the most violent memory in European history and one of the darkest chapters in the history of humanity. The extent of the horrors that took place during the execution of the Final Solution- the project that Heinrich Himmler engineered under Adolf Hitler in order to address the question of the Jews, that entailed the systematic genocide of the Jewish race- quite simply defy belief. Its sheer scale, with a death toll of over 8M men and women, is perhaps literally impossible for the modern mind to understand. Through an elaborate and nauseatingly efficient infrastructure of slave labour and extermination, the Nazi bid to cleanse the population of Europe took the lives of not just Jews, though these constituted the majority of the killings (an estimated 6M), but also of Romany gypsies, the disabled, political opponents and homosexuals. Jews were transported from countries as far away as Norway and Greece and research was even commissioned to establish how many Jews resided in Great Britain, with a view to transporting them also to Nazi camps upon the anticipated taking of the

country. The primary site of these killings was Auschwitz-Birkenau, a complex of concentration and extermination camps that lies 50 km from from Krakow. At Birkenau alone, 1.1M prisoners are estimated to have perished. The camps are now excellently maintained at great cost to the Polish government as a museum, open with free admission throughout 362 days of the year. Around 60% of visitors to the site are school students. Every day, Holocaust survivors are present at the site in order to answer questions from the public, a privilege that will likely not outlive the next two decades. It is little wonder then, given the recent social attitudes initially described, that the common European carefree mentality spares less and less time for remembering the horrors of the Holocaust, as well as other aspects of the continents bloody history. Visitors to Auschwitz-Birkenau have sharply decreased over the last three years, though economic recession explains the dip in tourism to the region in part. Elsewhere, there has also been a gradual decline in the number of television and radio broadcasts on Auschwitz and, more broadly, the Holocaust, though the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the camp was widely marked on 27th January of this year. Despite this, school curricula across the continent persist in teaching younger generations the mistakes of the past. In this country, the teaching of the Holocaust has been on the National Curriculum since 1991 and must be taught in all secondary schools between the ages of 11 14, not solely through History lessons but also through Citizenship and Religious Education classes. The British Government also grants 1.5M per year to fund a scheme that sends two students (aged 16 18) from every secondary school or Further Education College to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum in Poland. These provisions, as well an effective teacher-training scheme administered by the Imperial War Museum in conjunction with the Holocaust Educational Trustall serve to ensure that a minimum degree of compliance is adhered to in our educational system. The intention of these initiatives is to ensure at all costs that Karl Marxs remark on history does not hold true: History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. The Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum currently finds itself confronting the challenge of how to overcome the apparent indifference towards the Holocaust that has started to be seen in European attitudes. As more and more survivors pass away each year, the first-hand voices of history are lost (in 2010, we have an estimated 220,000, many of whom, naturally, are in a debilitated state of old age). This perceived absence of authenticity has been seen to render the Holocaust story as somehow inaccessible or impossible to fathom for a great many people. Without the immediate relatability and credibility of a first-hand witness, those experiences, already so difficult to conjure, have been lost to millions of European citizens. Whilst throughout previous decades it was common for survivors to carry out visits to schools, this now, for clear logistical reasons, has become a true and unfortunate rarity. The duty remains to maintain the museum as best as possible for it to serve as a Truth Site, as Holocaust3

survivor Elie Wiesel proposed, a testament to one of the greatest catastrophes in the history of civilisation and a place for visitors to reflect on the dangerous extremes that human evil can reach. By recognising this, visitors hopefully leave informed and prepared to communicate what they have witnessed themselves, better prepared to prevent a similar circumstance from arising once more. This function currently serves a particularly pertinent and critical purpose in view of the rise of the Far Right across Europe, represented in Britain by the worrying rise in popularity of the British Nationalist Party or in Austria by the 30% of voters who in 2009 voted for either the Freedom Party of Austria or Alliance For The Future of Austria, both rightwing extremist political parties. Indeed, the Museum, as well as battling indifference and ignorance confronts yet more adversity in the shape of underfunding. In 2009, the Director of the Museum, Dr Piotr Cywiski, urgently called out for assistance to European governments for a 120M Perpetual Fund , an endowment to generate enough annual interest to pay for the maintenance and security of the site. Finally, the Museum confronts its most sinister opposition: explicit attacks carried out principally by neo-Nazis. Recently, the well-publicised and thankfully short-lived theft of the grotesque 5-metre sign that stands above the entrance to Auschwitz reading Arbeit macht frei is indicative of this ill will towards the site and what it represents. The sign is said to have been stolen by Polish thieves on behalf of a Swedish right-wing extremist group hoping to use to proceeds from the sale of the sign to a collector of Nazi memorabilia. The theft of the sign led the Polish government to declare a state of national emergency and was described by one Polish minister as an act of vandalism that knows no equal . The sign has subsequently been replaced by a replica, showing that the integrity of the site is vulnerable to damage- even literallyat the hands of that which opposes it. Whilst the primary constituent of the over 1,000,000 visitors to AuschwitzBirkenau every year is made up of school students, each visitor to the site comes with their own predispositions to what the museum displays. From the torture and prison barracks of Auschwitz to the open fields of Birkenau, the iconography of the place is still deep-rooted in the collective imagination of the continent, particularly amongst older generations. Private individuals who visit the site are mainly composed of Jews come to pay respect to a place they consider to be in some way sacred or other holidaymakers to Poland, who include many groups of people from backpacking youths to married couples making a journey that they had long intended to make. Visitors predominantly come with reverential attitudes and a respectful silence typically accompanies the guided tours of the camps. Perversely, however, the recent rise in popularity of Krakow as a destination for stag and hen weekends, as well as a destination for cheap holiday breaks owing to its inclusion in the routes of lowcost air carriers, has led to many of these particular holidaymakers including the 4

visit on their itinerary. Due to this, some visitors, still in the revelrous spirit of their trip, choose to visit the museum after a excursion to Krakows nightclubs, nightclubs that have engineered themselves to cater for and exploit this audience through drink offers and free admissions. A visit to the scene of incalculable death and cruelty is thereby accompanied by a hangover and an often uninformed attitude, whence a contentious issue of etiquette emerges questioning how to behave appropriately in visiting the museum. This issue extends to the attitude of many Jews (in particular, many boisterous youngsters completing their military service for the Israeli army) who visit the site and ignore requests to refrain from photographing inside, touting their heritage as sufficient validation for their photography and behaviour. The AuschwitzBirkenau museum, 65 years after its liberation by the Soviet army, is today a place open to all visitors and any interpretation, a place considered by some to be a pilgrimage site and by others as simply another stop on a tourist trail. As for my own interest, I have long held a strong curiosity in knowing the truth of the Holocaust. I have sometimes wondered whether this interest is not a little morbid, as it goes without saying that literature on it is grounded in such despair, suffering and absurd violence that one can not help but be affected by it in a certain way. Testimonial texts, in particular, by Holocaust survivors such as Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel, use language so rich and powerful in description and honesty that one can be left breathless and exhausted by reading their testimony. I am particularly interested in the visuality of the Nazi concentration camps; I remember, for example, the first time I saw the brilliantly presented permanent Holocaust exhibition at the Imperial War Museum, which displays hundreds of frontal portraits of prisoners at Auschwitz recovered from SS archives. I have had the remarkable opportunity myself to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum and photographed the remains of the concentration camp. The day I went, the sky was a bright blue and a blinding winter sun covered the fields in a film of serenity. I have chosen some of my images to accompany this text. Following recent e-mail contact with Agnieszka Sieradzka, an art historian at the Collections Department of the Museum, I have kindly been offered the very special opportunity to photograph parts of the museum usually off limits to visitors and, extraordinarily, to receive personalized teaching on her area of specialisation. Miss Sieradazka specialises in the clandestine art that was born in Auschwitz-Birkenau, including poetry, music and watercolour. In particular, she has extensive knowledge of painting in the camps, where prisoners would risk harsh punishment to furtively set aside beetroot soup- despite the most extreme hunger- so as to paint images of their hometowns or portraits of absent loved ones. She has offered to show me pieces in the closed collection at Auschwitz. Were I fortunate enough to win this Travel Prize, I would use the funds in order to return to the camps with a loaned Nikon D90 camera in order to attempt to better capture photographically the importance of the Museum to me, and to benefit from Miss Sieradazkas unique and illuminating knowledge. In doing so, I would hope to further fulfill my own personal duty to this chapter of the past: to see, to understand and to remember.

Photographs Page 1: The Watch Tower at Auschwitz; photographed from the inside of camp Birkenau. The prisoners of Auschwitz-Birkenau arrived by train at this entrance and were instantly sent to Selections, where a Nazi doctor instantly decided whether the prisoner should be killed or used for labour. Page 2: Chimneys at Birkenau; these brick chimneys are all that remain of the many wooden barracks that housed the majority of inmates at Birkenau. Page 3: (i.) The Black Wall; a brick wall against which 20,000 prisoners were killed by rifle at Auschwitz, many of whom had been brought from the nearby Block 11, a torture building where the most inhumane acts at Auschwitz took place. Page 4: (i.) Crematorium Fallen; One of the two crematoria at Birkenau, where 1.1M prisoners were cremated, lies in the same state as it was found by the Soviet Army. The Nazis had previously attempted to destroy the structure in a bid to disguise their genocide. Due to a lack of conservation funds, the rubble deteriorates in condition more and more each year. (ii.) Arbeit Macht Frei; this notorious sign, reading work will set you free ,stands above the entrance to Auschwitz. Page 5: View of Birkenau From Watch Tower; the remains of the wooden prison barracks of Birkenau lay dilapidated below a celestial light. Photographs taken on 16th March 2010 at Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.