Efforts to preserve the site of the Auschwitz death camp in Poland and the personal effects of the inmates at the camp are now in the planning stages, with expectations that the governments of several nations will foot the bill.
Emissaries of the Ronald Lauder Foundation in New York signed an agreement earlier this month with Kazimierz Smolen, the head of the Oswiecim-Brzezinka Museum, as Auschwitz-Birkenau is officially known, to allow a team of conservation experts to visit the camp to determine what work is necessary.
They were following up on a report made last January by the Lauder Foundation’s Polish department chairman, Rabbi Chaskel Besser, that the camp was in serious disrepair.
“The whole site will need preservation, not just the barracks,” said Frank Reiss, vice president of the Lauder Foundation, who signed the agreement with Smolen together with Kalman Sultanik, co-chairman of the Lauder Foundation’s Auschwitz Preservation Committee.
“That includes gas chambers,” said Reiss, who, like Sultanik, is a survivor of several camps.
Explaining that the Nazis had exploded the gas chambers to cover up their deeds, Reiss said, “The difficult task is that modern science does not know how to preserve modern ruins.”
Sultanik corrected reports of a planned international campaign. “We are not planning a financial campaign, not an international campaign, no campaign at all — because a campaign is connected with public relations, and we don’t want Auschwitz to be connected with such things,” he said.
Both men said there was a desire for the project to be paid for by governments, such as those of West Germany, Austria, the United States, France and Italy.
EXPECT POLISH COOPERATION
“We would expect that the Poles would give cooperation, expertise, manpower,” said Reiss, emphasizing that the Lauder Foundation would not be paying the bill to preserve the camp.
The endeavor began in April, when Reiss took James Frantz, chief conservator of objects at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, to Auschwitz.
Frantz will return to Auschwitz in December, accompanied by George Wheeler, a specialist in building conservation; Judith Levinson, a conservator at the Museum of Natural History in New York; and Sharon Zelinger, a projector director at the Lauder Foundation.
Frantz noted that the buildings at Birkenau “are in the state of rapid deterioration.”
Frantz and Levinson would address themselves to the conservation of shoes, luggage and human hair. No plans have been set for what might be done to preserve them.
Frantz spoke of the problematic aspects of preserving such a site and repeatedly stressed that the issue was one of conservancy, not restoration or refurbishing, “which I think would be a great mistake.
“As for the actual degree of intervention, my own inclination is it be absolutely minimal, and that, indeed, there not be an attempt to restore such items at all,” Frantz said.
Smolen, the Auschwitz director, pointed out to Reiss how unstable the barracks were, showing Reiss the Auschwitz construction plans.
The wooden barracks were built on very shallow foundations, from prefabricated panels intended to house a stable for about 80 horses.
PRESERVATION EFFORTS APPLAUDED
The intended effort to preserve Auschwitz has been applauded by Auschwitz survivors interviewed, although leaders of Holocaust survivor groups expressed hope that the camp would not become a quasi-shrine or even a tourist site. Nobody wanted anything changed.
Dr. Hadassah Rosensaft, chairwoman of the Archives Committee of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Committee, said it should “certainly” be preserved. “There’s no question. It should remain as it is. Nothing should be changed there.”
Helen Tischauer, who said she was one of the first women to enter Auschwitz and was the women’s camp statistician, said hearing about the restoration was “The best news I ever heard. It’s about time. The Polish government did the best it could since 1945.”
Professor Rudolf Vrba, whose escape from Auschwitz led to informing the Hungarian Jewish community what awaited them, believes “it should be (preserved). I think it’s an important part of the history.”
Vrba said that even in 1949, when he was last in Auschwitz, “it looked to me decayed already at that time. I think that everything should be done to preserve the site and to do it professionally.”
The restoration project was also described as “delicate” by Sam Bloch, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors.
He suggested a “meeting of minds to see what there is to do.”
Menachem Rosensaft, founder of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, cited the need to preserve the barrack walls with their scrawled inscriptions, “the last messages of the dead. These must be preserved.”
However, he cautioned against any possibility of turning Auschwitz into a shrine or tourist spot. “There is absolutely nothing sacred or anything positive there.”
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