Auschwitz Memorial

As the years pass, the last witnesses to the nightmare of Auschwitz are passing away.

What remains is the historical site itself, and the objects within it that allow historians & conservators to learn the stories of individuals.

---

Listen to podcasts created by Bartosz Panek and Jarosław Kociszewski from New Eastern Europe. They invited historians @auschwitzmuseum to talk about different aspects of the history of Auschwitz: https://neweasterneurope.eu/2022/11/23/auschwitz-birkenau-death-at-a-wave-of-a-finger/

#Auschwitz #history #podcast @histodons

Auschwitz-Birkenau. Death at a wave of a finger - New Eastern Europe - A bimonthly news magazine dedicated to Central and Eastern European affairs

As the years pass, the last witnesses to the nightmare of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the death factory where more than a million Jews from all over Europe were exterminated, are passing away. What remains is the camp itself, and the objects within it that allow historians and conservationists to learn the stories of individuals. Their stories not only help to understand the tragedy of the victims who were exterminated here, but add a human, personal dimension to these memories.

New Eastern Europe - A bimonthly news magazine dedicated to Central and Eastern European affairs
Dec 21, 2022 at 12:48pmWeb
Show threadJenXDec 21, 2022

@auschwitzmuseum @histodons

I took my kids to see the camps when we were on vacation in Poland (we're from the US). It's so important, even if it's deeply uncomfortable. The part that hit them hardest was the exhibition of drawings from the children's barracks. We spent that night decompressing by people watching in Krakow's Market Square.

History is hard to learn from sometimes, at least when you try to do it properly. Thank you for spreading these people's stories.

Show threadJenXDec 21, 2022

@auschwitzmuseum @histodons

Follow-up to my own post, but when I was taking history classes in school, they lacked any connection to the people and motivations of the time. It's easy to test for dates. It's not easy to communicate the personal side of things. I took a class my senior year of HS that changed that for me, but I know many aren't so lucky.

A big thank you to the teachers who share your passions in ways that help your students relate. It really does help.

Show threadBoglegDec 21, 2022
@m0nkeyh0use @auschwitzmuseum @histodons It's the "why" that makes me always come back to history. The rest of it (how, what, when, where) is just a framework for "why" in my mind.
Show threadMartin SchlegelDec 21, 2022
@auschwitzmuseum @histodons I have spoken to holocaust survivers. My kids won‘t be able to do the same. Now it is up to us to never let be forgotten the horros that happened so that they may never happen again.
Show threadKristinaRepaDec 23, 2022
@auschwitzmuseum @histodons since brownnosed elno took over, I never see your tweets on my timeline. Mark Gaetz otoh? Every day.
Fuck fascism.
Show threadRayGallonDec 23, 2022
@auschwitzmuseum @histodons On my visit I had a realisation. The exhibits of masses of hair, shoes, etc. were just piles of stuff. I know they’re meant to show how the Nazis industrialized genocide but it had the opposite effect for me. They took on meaning when looked at individually: what colour shoe, man or woman, size? Most poignant were the suitcases with names & addresses on them. That’s why I appreciate your highlighting of individuals & their personal histories
Show threadSweepers3945Dec 26, 2022
@RayGallon @auschwitzmuseum @histodons Although I think the focus upon the individual experience is an important aspect of study, I personally found the ‘piles of stuff’ absolutely key to grasping the scale of the atrocity (in a way that, even though I fully comprehended the statistics, raw numbers on a page couldn’t convey). A personal view, obviously.
Show threadRayGallonDec 26, 2022
@Sweepers3945 @auschwitzmuseum @histodons I get that, and agree that it’s intensely personal. It’s good that we each get to choose how we react and why. If the memorial weren’t there we wouldn’t have that.