A blog I've found

Should Auschwitz Be Left to Waste Away?

Tuesday February 10, 2009

As the decades pass, the grass grows high and the stones have begun to crumble at Auschwitz. With the Nazi death and concentration camp falling into disrepair, the future of Auschwitz is in question. While many believe that it is imperative to keep Auschwitz as a reminder of the horrors of the Holocaust no matter what the cost, others think that the sprawling fields and rusted barbed wire do not accurately portray the truth, so recommend that Auschwitz be left to decay. In an article by the BBC, historian Robert Jan Van Pelt and former Polish Foreign Minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski (also a former Auschwitz prisoner) debate the issue. What do you think should happen to Auschwitz?

This is one blog post on an About.com blog kept by a woman named Jennifer Rosenberg, who has (according to the site) been the guide to 20th century US history since 1997. It seems to me that's pretty impressive longevity given the turn-over rate and overall rapid pace at which things seem to move in this virtual world. I've been keeping tabs on her site since I started this blog, and I keep going back to it for three simple reasons. 1) her posts are extremely short. They are at most a paragraph each, very quick and easy to read. Rather than giving all the information about her selected topic in her own post, she usually provides links to articles and pertinent sites. 2) she chooses varied topics, not confining herself to one area or subject. This post was about Auschwitz. The last one was about Dr. Death, a Nazi doctor who experimented on prisoners. Before that she posted on FDR and Obama, the siege of Leningrad, the first animal in space, and a yo-yo museum. Yeah. :-) And they were all interesting. 3) She always encourages the reader to get involved, to ask questions, follow the links she provides. The one about Dr. Death actually led me (in class, I confess) on a long virtual hunt through news articles about where Nazis had fled  after the end of WWII and Hitler's suicide. These three qualities are all part of her voice as a writer. She is open, energetic, non-threatening and interested, but somehow very casual and easy. Though my posts are a bit longer, I hope I can pick up some of her ability to be engaging. 

In regards to the actual question she asked, I think it's an important one. Auschwitz is a place of memory. Yes, they are terrible memories. But they are memories, they exist now to remind us of where we have been, what we have done and been responsible for, what we have experienced. The human race has a nasty habit of forgetting these moments, and most especially the lessons learned from them, and repeating them over and over. I don't think that Auschwitz should be left as an open scar on the land, to fester and rust and be a terrestrial poison. Neither should it become a developer's playground or the site of a condominium development. That idea is just as dumb to me as trying to raise the Titanic. The first idea that came to my mind when I read the question actually, was allowing people who had been imprisoned there, or who had been in other concentration, death or work camps under the Nazis to take the place apart stone by stone. Allow them to see it, to walk it, to confront it, and then to dismantle it. And the most important part comes after that. When they have taken it down, they must build something new, something beautiful and simple and strong. They must build something where people will come, where they will fill it up with happy energy and new memories, allowing the old to take their place as memories and not as present facts. What they would build I don't know. But that was my idea. Any construction suggestions?