Reflecting on the Purpose of Memorial Sites Now and into the Future: Panel Discussion

Submitted by Tanya Huelett

Part. I

What is the purpose of a memorial?

What distinguishes a memorial from a museum and a museum from a tourist trap?

Should a memorial:

• ·         Tell an accurate and honest story?
• ·         Support a nationalist project?
• ·         Celebrate and/or honor life?
• ·         Promote reconciliation or healing?
• ·         Prove and/or confront the existence of evil and atrocity?
• ·         Build bridges?

How many of these can any memorial accomplish?

These are the questions I’m left with after a morning at Auschwitz. No two members of our contingent experienced the visit in the same way.  While I can’t speak for others, I found myself overwhelmed by the enormity of the suffering we were being asked to explore and comprehend. This feeling of being overwhelmed was exacerbated by the extreme density of the visiting population, the chaos of finding and maintaining a group, and the fast pace at which we were asked to consider artifacts, texts, video, and the evidence of entire lives that deserved contemplation.  I could not engage or process anything other than the vastly differing moods and modes of the visitors. Some groups filed through solemnly while others talked loudly and boisterously. Some individuals took copious flash photos while others gazed silently at the stories laid before us. Some people asked rapid fire questions while others shrouded themselves in silence. All the while our very competent guide would not stop walking or talking long enough for me to think.

Part II

Piotr Setkiewicz, Head of the Research Department at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum

Robert Kuwalek, Curator and Historian at the State Museum of Majdanek

Father Manfred Desalaers, Director of the Education Department at the Center for Dialogue and Prayer in Oswiecim

After a rainy, muddy, stunning two hours, we returned to the Center for Dialogue and Prayer for a panel discussion on the role of memorial sites today and in the future.  We heard from three speakers with three different approaches to this work. Piotr Setkiewicz talked to us about the importance of filling in historical gaps in the stories that the museum tells, and about the importance of providing information on all aspects of the camp experience (to that end the museum is currently working on a fuller presentation of the story of perpetrators). He noted that there are students who now visit the museum with teachers who traveled to Auschwitz when they were students. With so many unique and return visitors every year, the museum has to figure out where to grow and develop its resources and scope without bending to trends or straying away from its core mission.  Robert Kuwalek talked to us about his passion for sharing survivor stories and engaging in the transfer of memories. Mr. Kuwalek said that he struggles with how to share this history with visitors (especially young people) in ways that feel real and are able to reach them.  One of the biggest questions he continuously grapples with is: How we will tell this story when there are no more living survivors? He said quite honestly that he had no answer.  Father Manfred Deselaers talked a great deal about how the goal of his center is to create a space for dialogue and healing among the groups that come to the museum and memorial site. He sees the center in the present and the future as a place for people to come together and acknowledge their wounds.  The center facilitates conversation but does not require people to talk. It helps people to connect the history they are encountering to their own identities and lives, and to build bridges across groups. He left us with a poignant question that he wants all of those who come to the center to contemplate: What does this soil (and the voices of this soil) ask of us? 

Part III

After the trip to Auschwitz and the afternoon panel, I asked many exhausted Facing History family members to share a word, phrase, or question that they wanted visitors to a Holocaust memorial site to grapple with. This is what they said:

Concepts/Understandings:

• ·         Responsibility
• ·         Freedom
• ·         Dignity
• ·         Tolerance
• ·         The Value of Life
• ·         Upholding Democracy
• ·         Understanding the scope of the history
• ·         Understanding the different perspectives and experiences
• ·         It wasn’t just the Jews.
• ·         The individuality of life and those who lived and died during the Holocaust

Questions:

• ·         What does this soil ask of me?
• ·         How do you turn the sadness and fear into resolve?
• ·         Where was man?
• ·         What piece of their (the perpetrators) hearts was missing?
• ·         How can we keep our hearts intact?
• ·         How do I understand this history as my history? As our history?