Dr. Piotr Cywiński is the Director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and the President of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation (Poland). This fall, he visited Ukraine as a specially invited guest and as a speaker of the Forum of Oral History of Ukraine, which was held in Kyiv at the initiative of the Museum of Civilian Voices by the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation.

Auschwitz was one of the largest Nazi concentration camps. Built near the Polish city of Oświęcim, it existed for five years – from 1941 to 1945. It was not a stand-alone camp. Auschwitz was rather a complex facility. The largest parts were the administrative camp, the death camp – Birkenau, and the labour camp.

In 1947, Poland founded a museum in memory of the victims of these three camps. A memorial facility containing commemorative messages in twenty languages, including the Ukrainian language, was built on the site of the Birkenau gas chambers. Every year, the camp receives 1.5 to 2 million visitors. The experience of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum in preserving memory and how to document and keep the memory of the Russian-Ukrainian war – these were the topics we talked about with Piotr Cywiński, who has been the director of the museum since 2006.

Piotr is a historian by profession. In the museum, his main task is to develop and maintain the worldwide knowledge about Auschwitz and the genocide of the Jews. He is also responsible for preserving the genuineness, the authenticity of Auschwitz.

Below is Piotr’s direct speech. 

The text was specially prepared for LB.ua by the memory platform Memorial, which shares the stories about civilians killed by Russia and the fallen Ukrainian soldiers. To submit information about Ukraine’s losses, fill out the forms: for fallen military and civilian victims.

Museum on the site of the tragedy

Photo: credits to the Museum of Civilian Voices of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation. The Forum of Oral History of Ukraine, 10 October 2023

Piotr Cywiński during the interview

After the Second World War, no one had a clear idea what to do with such a place as a concentration camp. The territory was very large – hundreds of hectares and hundreds of buildings.

The years 1945-1947 saw some robust discussions about what exactly could and should be created on the site of the former concentration camp, and whether anything should be done at all. Some former prisoners of the camp were among the participants in the discussions.

The views were quite different. Some believed that everything should be destroyed, arguing that people who did not go through Auschwitz would still not understand those who lived through it or died there. Some proposed creating a university here, so that something good would appear instead of the bad; or opening a children’s orphanage, since there were many orphaned children left after the war.

Photo: The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum

However, the idea of creating a museum at this place prevailed. Because museum is a type of institution that would be most useful in this context.

People who come to see Auschwitz are after some immersion in the authenticity of that time. People’s encounter with something physical, something that can be seen with their own eyes, something that can be touched, intensifies the feelings. It gives you more understanding that the tragedy really happened and what it was like.

I can say that 220,000 children died in Auschwitz, or I can bring a person to the scene of the tragedy and show only one shoe of a child who was killed in the concentration camp. I am confident that the shoe would make a stronger impression.

Photo: The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum

Photo: The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum

Mission of the museum 

The key mission of the museum is to preserve the memory about the victims of the concentration camps, as well as about the crimes that were committed here.

The Auschwitz concentration camp is the bottom that humankind sank to. And we, the next generations, should know and remember this.

Thanks to the museum, we convey a historical message about the most atrocious crimes. At the same time, after visiting the museum, modern people often come to the conclusion that nowadays the world is generally not so cruel, because they see the contrast between the horrors that took place back then and the life today.

In addition, after the war, the history of the Holocaust was often distorted, changed, silenced, and only partially interpreted. Destroying this place would be tantamount to destroying the evidence of the tragedy and its scale. 

Photo: The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum

Development of memory institutions

In Auschwitz, the place of remembrance was created very quickly – two years after the end of the war – in contrast to other former concentration camps in Europe, such as Dachau, Buchenwald... There, similar remembrance and memory sites began to be created only in the 1960s, when people, who survived the war and remembered it very well, began to ponder en masse whether the next generations would remember it.

After the Second World War, the development of memory institutions was triggered by these particular intentions – to leave the memory of the horrors of the war for future generations, so that they would not repeat history. And nowadays, there is still the last chance to collect living testimonies of those who survived the Second World War and concentration camps, as the last of these people are dying.

The post-war society used the lived experience for many processes: to create or establish international relations, to develop international cooperation, activities for the sake of peace, to begin the formation of the European Union, to develop religion – the experienced war was the impetus for all this. 

Photo: The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum

How to preserve the memory of tragedies

Memory and history are closely connected, but they are still somewhat different. Historical knowledge is about information and facts, while memory is stored at the level of self-identification. It is what is inside us.

Memory, in particular the memory of tragedies, is represented differently depending on the culture of a country and particular societies. Yet, there are some common guidelines that I would advise people to follow.

The most important thing is the unconditional fidelity to history. Even where we do not really like it. History is not black and white, clear, and transparent. But quite often places of remembrance show only part of history, thus distorting it. This depends on many factors, such as emotional, political, and ideological ones.

“Truth is always complex and multi-component. And for memory to be therapeutic, it should also touch some points or spots that can be painful for society.”

It is worth paying attention to things (objects) and trying to preserve certain elements that would tell people about the tragedy. Things/objects are a good way to convey the authenticity of a tragedy. They are often more eloquent and louder than words.

I would advise you to be very careful with artistic emotional elements. Architects, artists, sculptors are often engaged in order to create remembrance sites, and what they offer is their vision of the situation. The most beautiful sculpture will not be as compelling as some real-life, authentic thing or object related to the tragedy.

Photo: credits to the Museum of Civilian Voices of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation. The Forum of Oral History of Ukraine, 10 October 2023

Piotr Cywiński during the interview

And all this will not work out, if you do not listen carefully to the voices of those people who survived the tragedy. It is these people who know the most about it.

How to approach people with [war] trauma

The evolution of each trauma is about the same – regardless of the event that caused it – a car accident, violence, or murder.

Usually, a person who experienced a tragedy wants to share it at first, and then falls into a period of silence, after which he or she begins to learn to live again, to live with this trauma. These stages should be taken into account when collecting information from people living through a tragedy.

At the same time, all people are certainly different and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to the way how to communicate with them and collect evidence. If someone wants to share his or her experience immediately after the event, it is worth taking such an opportunity for listening and recording. Such people’s memories are still vivid; they can describe events very carefully, in all the details that might be forgotten over time.

However, being exposed to trauma, many people are not easy to establish connection with. They often have a desire to share their experiences when the end of their lives starts looming. Perhaps this happens because people begin to realize that if they do not share it in time, no one else will be able to do it. Such people should not be put under pressure. When due time comes, they will share what they think is necessary.

Often, in families that experienced trauma, the topic of the tragedy is tabooed at the level of two generations, i.e., parents and their children. While for grandchildren, it is easier to ask their grandparents about the past. This should also be taken into account. Testimonies about the war can and should be collected not only when the war continues, but also long after it. 

Photo: credits to the Museum of Civilian Voices of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation. The Forum of Oral History of Ukraine, 10 October 2023

Piotr Cywiński during the interview

To collect information is now more important than to analyse it

Currently, the most crucial step for the Ukrainian society is to collect as much information about the Russian-Ukrainian war as possible. Not to analyse it immediately, but rather to look for ways to collect and, most importantly, store such information. Because there is always a shortage of time and other resources.

Clearly, people want to analyse and reflect on the events here and now, to draw certain conclusions – this is also essential for the present. But if you look at it from the point of view of history – which is exactly my viewpoint – it is much more important to have a big amount of data from the war.

This will ensure a wider field for reflections, but reflections that will be more carefully considered. In addition, it will be a base for two or three generations of historians who will undertake the analysis, and they will have enough time to do it.

There are several stages of information analysis. The first is for the needs of judicial authorities for the trial of perpetrators. The second stage is a historical analysis. Any historian researching the topic of the Second World War would give a lot for photographs from that time. The third stage is an educational analysis. Children born 20 years from now will not know current events without the information you collect now. Thanks to it, future generations will be able to understand their national identity. 

Photo: credits to the Museum of Civilian Voices of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation. The Forum of Oral History of Ukraine, 10 October 2023

Piotr Cywiński during the interview

Model of the Russian-Ukrainian war archive

I would like to share an approach that, in my opinion, Ukraine should make fundamental. I would advise you to do it as soon as possible.

I assume that there are approximately 30-40 million mobile phones in Ukraine. And some or even most of these phones store probably hundreds of photos and videos from this war. People have some live footage of these events. In total, these are hundreds of millions of materials. These photos and videos have metadata – a lot of information is recorded automatically, such as time, geolocation, and serial number of the device.

I believe that all these media materials should be stored centrally so that they could be used for analysis later. I think it is worth making a nationwide program/application/server where people would send their media files related to the war.

No country has done this before. And this can have a pivotal effect on the future of memory.

For example, 20 years from now, a historian learns that three tanks passed through a Ukrainian village. Knowing where and when it happened, having a media database, he or she will be able to find some photos or videos of these three tanks. It can relate to any event that may seem of little importance to us today but may be of significant importance in the future from a historical viewpoint.

Media data can be lost over time. Nowadays, people have a habit of changing their phone to a new one every few years, and often they either delete photos and videos or leave them scattered on different carriers. Some media materials made during the war are no longer available.

“I am convinced that this war in Ukraine is nowadays the most documented in Europe. But documenting it is only part of the story. It is very important not to lose these materials, to store them. There is an opportunity now to make the largest war archive in the history of humankind.”

The importance of the visual in our lives is extremely high these days. Words should be supported by visual evidence.

From my observations, as an ordinary citizen of Poland and a historian, I can call Ukraine a world champion in terms of transmitting information about the war to the world.

I am confident that Ukraine has every chance to make the Russian-Ukrainian war the best memorialized, as currently you are already doing very well with it.

Photo: The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum

The importance of collecting evidence from all parties

Also, in the future, the stories of Russian prisoners of war will play a significant role for having a complete historical database. This is something sorely lacking in the study of the Second World War and many other wars.

There are tens of thousands of stories from concentration camp victims and only a few stories of people who served in the SS. There are no written accounts of Gulag workers. There are no stories from Turks killing Armenians. There are no stories from Pol Pot’s soldiers in Cambodia. The only genocide in which the accounts of both the victims and the executioners were recorded is the Rwandan genocide. Based on it, we can understand what the mechanism of the rise of evil in a person looks like in that particular case.

Given the empathetic approach, more attention in wars is always paid to the stories of victims. However, we will start asking ourselves, “Where does the source of evil come from?” And that is when we will think about perpetrators, because evil is perpetrators, not victims. 

Photo: The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum

Photo: The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum

If we want to understand the mechanism of how evil rises and develops and want to have an image of history as a whole, then we need to have the testimonies and opinions of the other side. It is important that an indicative prisoner of war tells us what happened between the village in Buryatia, where he comes from, and the town of Bucha in Ukraine, where he came to kill people. It is important to know what this person thought, what changes in his behaviour occurred before the start of the war and during his stay at the front. How evil was growing inside this person, what feelings he was led by. What was he told? What was he promised? What was he coerced with? This information is necessary in order to understand the essence of this war from the viewpoint of anthropology.

It is also particularly important for punishing the guilty and forming a complete picture of the events of the war. Condemning those who acted directly on the ground will not be enough. It is necessary to establish a clear connection between the actions of individuals and the actions of those in power.

When the court in The Hague is able to link the words of the Kremlin that Ukrainians as a people do not exist, with the actions of the soldiers who executed the orders – only then can we talk about genocide. Because genocide is a legal concept, but not a journalistic or political definition. And in this sense, memories and testimonies of Russian prisoners of war can be of fundamental importance.

Olia Korotenko

Source: LB