Director of the Auschwitz Museum: The situation is significantly worse than it was during World War II

Europe and the world are facing a resurgence of populism and hate speech, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and evasion of responsibility, assessed Piotr Cywinski, director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, emphasizing that this historical site is proof of how far human hatred and the absence of reaction to evil can lead.

“We are witnessing the resurgence of the worst kinds of populism and xenophobia… and it is very disturbing,” Cywinski told reporters, who has been the museum’s director in the Polish town of Oswiecim since 2006.

Auschwitz is precisely “proof of what hatred can lead to,” Cywinski emphasized this week at an international seminar for journalists, highlighting that the museum “tries to present the mechanism of evil that occurred here to encourage people to reflect and analyze their responsibility today.”

>>> In Germany, raids due to ‘hate speech’ on social media

And today, from a moral standpoint, he says, there is no doubt that the situation is “significantly worse” than it was before World War II. He explains that there was a war then, helping Jews was punishable by death, and information spread slowly.

“Today we know everything in real time. We are not at war. And in terms of assistance, not much more is happening than then,” he said.

Cywinski stated that the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum organizes numerous other conferences and gatherings, for youth, teachers and professors, judges and police officers, diplomats, and even prisoners, in addition to seminars for journalists. The memorial center organizes gatherings in other cities and countries.

Genocide begins with words

Pawel Sawicki from the media office, who guided journalists through Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau, pointed out that genocide does not begin with murders.

“All atrocities begin with words,” he said. The absence of reaction to words is an accelerator of everything that follows.

For Pawel Sawicki, his colleagues say he has been a guide through the notorious death camp for a large number of heads of state, prime ministers, and celebrities. But he is not allowed to talk about that. He is allowed and wants to speak about what the education office in Auschwitz is intended for – about human responsibility – and to convey that message especially to journalists because, as he says, the power of the media is enormous and therefore the fourth estate must be aware of its power.

>>> Human rights activists persecuted in as many as 29 countries for cooperating with the UN

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum saw a significant increase in visitor numbers from 2001 to 2016. In 2001, there were just under half a million visitors, and last year there were just over two million. Among them were 11,750 from Croatia.

At the entrance to Auschwitz I, the majority are young people visiting the former concentration camp as part of an educational program. They make up up to 65 percent of the total number of visitors. Alongside them, there are numerous tourist groups led by well-educated guides in 17 languages.

“No museum can provide such an experience because a visit to Auschwitz is not like a visit to the Holocaust Museum in Washington or Yad Vashem because this is an authentic place. It is not a museum about something that happened far away, but here,” says Sawicki.

>>> Court forced Facebook to delete ‘hate speech’ in Austria, EU

Museum staff want to prompt visitors to question their individual responsibility. “The most important task for us in the education center is to teach people about responsibility, to point out that we are all observers of evil and that we always have a choice,” says Sawicki. Individuals decide whether to remain passive or to act.

Therefore, the goal of the education center is, on one hand, to present historical data and facts, but also to highlight the personal stories of survivors to transform the dehumanized mass of victims into a personal story, giving the victim an identity.

“Empathy is the first motivator for people,” believes Cywinski.

From June 14, 1940, when the first group of 728 Polish political prisoners was brought to the camp, until its liberation on January 27, 1945, 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz, including 1.1 million Jews, of whom more than a million perished, mostly from Hungary and Poland. A total of six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.

Germany the largest donor

In order for future generations to learn something by visiting the former death camp, it is necessary to preserve all immovable and movable objects, which is a huge task, and its scope before the establishment of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation in 2009 “was beyond our financial capabilities,” said the director.

>>> Police investigate Marušić’s call for ‘execution of human rights activists’

The foundation’s goal was to raise 120 million euros for conservation work, and today it is only missing eight million after contributions from 36 countries and private donors. Germany contributed the most – 60 million euros, the USA 15 million, Poland 10 million, and between 5 million and 1 million euros from France, Austria, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Italy, Israel, and Russia. Among private donors is also the Steven Spielberg Foundation, the director of the well-known Holocaust film “Schindler’s List,” for which Branko Lustig won an Oscar as a producer in 1993.

Conservation work needs to preserve, among other things, 45 brick barracks, 22 wooden ones, 21 small and six large watchtowers, 3,800 suitcases, 110,000 shoes, and 4,500 works of art, as well as cans that contained the poisonous gas Zyklon B and 390 pieces of striped clothing.

The memorial also has about two tons of victims’ hair, which, however, as concluded after numerous discussions, will not be conserved but left to natural processes. The basic idea of conservation work is to preserve the complete authenticity of the site, making them extremely expensive. “For us, preserving the authenticity of the site is the foundation of any other activity,” they emphasize at the museum.

>>> Germany passed a controversial law punishing hate speech

The plan is also to establish a new education center, a new visitor center, and a new exhibition center. When it comes to the exhibition center, the idea is that visitors do not return to the past upon entry, but that they are pointed to the main questions that humanity needs to ask today. It is necessary to show how there was first a huge frustration, upon which propaganda and populism were built, then the enemy was presented, and extermination began.

“I want every visitor to ask themselves – what moment are we in now?” said director Cywinski.

Holocaust denial

There are also those who deny the Holocaust. To them, the museum offers a plethora of arguments about what happened in Auschwitz. Cywinski says that Holocaust deniers today are different from those in the 1980s and 1990s. Back then, they mostly wanted to promote themselves even though they knew that what they were saying was not true.

“Today’s deniers have a faster tongue than mind,” emphasizes Cywinski, but he points out that there is a deeper and more serious problem in some parts and countries of Africa and the Middle East. “There, denial is not only accepted but encouraged. The problem is deeper there,” he said.