In 1944, members of the Sonderkommando —the "special squads, " composed almost exclusively of Jewish prisoners, who ensured the smooth operation of the gas chambers and had firsthand knowledge of the ...extermination process—buried on the grounds of Auschwitz-Birkenau a series of remarkable eyewitness accounts of Nazi genocide. This careful and penetrating study examines anew these "Scrolls of Auschwitz, " which were gradually recovered, in damaged and fragmentary form, in the years following the camp's liberation. It painstakingly reconstructs their historical context and textual content, revealing complex literary works that resist narrow moral judgment and engage difficult questions about the limits of testimony.
This paper considers how the Auschwitz Birkenau State Museum is experienced by teenage visitors on organized visits with the Holocaust Educational Trust (UK). The findings presented are based on ...semi-structured interviews with twelve 17 year olds, exploring their emotional engagement with the sites and how they perceive and understand this emotional interaction. The findings suggest that young people experience their visit in a variety of ways, and that this is an incomplete and ongoing process in their learning. The paper raises a number of considerations for educators taking educational visits to the museum, to support pupils in their learning.
W artykule opisano problemy rozwoju turystyki w Oświęcimiu, miasta, którego wizerunek zdominowany jest przez miejsce ludobójstwa KL Auschwitz-Birkenau. W opracowaniu skoncentrowano się na prezentacji ...wyników badań nad wizerunkiem miasta. Dodatkowym celem jest przedstawienie działań prowadzących do zmiany niekorzystnego wizerunku Oświęcimia – „miasta w cieniu muzeum”. Są one zawarte w Strategii rozwoju turystyki w Oświęcimiu na lata 2018–2030 (2018), opracowanej z udziałem autorów niniejszego artykułu. W tekście dokonano również analizy walorów turystycznych oraz zagospodarowania turystycznego pod kątem wykorzystania ich w tworzeniu uzupełniającej oferty dla odwiedzających Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau.
This article explores how inhabitants of the town of Oświęcim/Auschwitz discursively construct two memoryscapes. On the one hand, there is the 'living' Oświęcim, on the other hand there is the ...'dead' Auschwitz. Demarcations between the two are fluid and their meaning depends on the person who is defining and the audience addressed. Locals draw on these memoryscapes in creating mental borders within their physical living space, especially to create disinvolvement when it comes to the Auschwitz memoryscape. The findings are based on interviews with policy makers, data gathered in two Facebook groups of inhabitants, and participant observation among those inhabitants.
This article presents the degree of aeolization of Pleistocene deposits in the foreground of the European sand belt in southern Poland. Ten of the 13 sites were established in the Oświęcim Basin and ...three in the south part of the Silesian Upland. Attention was focused on four types of deposits formed during three glaciations (Sanian, Odranian, Vistulian): boulder clay, fluvioglacial sands and gravels, end moraine deposits, and aeolian sands. Quartz grain abrasion (for the 0.8–1.0 mm fraction) was examined by mechanical graniformametry and the morphoscopic method. The record of aeolian processes in analyzed deposits is the presence of quartz grains RM (very well-rounded and mat) and EM/RM (moderately rounded and mat). They were found in deposits of various origins and ages but in variable proportions. Considering only the average percentage of grains RM, it should be regarded that abrasion of deposits is low in the case of fluvioglacial deposits, moderate in the case of glacial deposits, and good in the case of aeolian deposits. However, the key factor in determining the degree of abrasion is the share of EM/RM grains, which in the abovementioned deposits are seven, three, and twice as many as RM grains. Therefore, the most noteworthy research result is the very high total share of grains with aeolian abrasion (RM + EM/RM), amounting on average to 84.1% for Odranian fluvioglacial deposits, 86.7% for Sanian glacial deposits and 92.6% for Late Glacial aeolian deposits. It means that in the study area, glacial and fluvioglacial transport included deposits with good aeolian abrasion obtained in the periglacial environment before the transgression of the ice sheets. Probably due to the longer persistence of periglacial conditions in southern Poland, compared to its central and northern parts, the degree of aeolization of fluvioglacial and glacial deposits is better. At the same time, there is a significant differentiation in the aeolization of fluvioglacial deposits within the outwash plain in the foreland of the maximum extent of the Odranian ice sheet. In its proximal part, near the front of the ice sheet, fluvioglacial deposits are characterized by much worse abrasion of quartz grains than in the distal part.
The article presents issues of tourism development in Oświęcim – a town that remains in the shadow of the former genocide site of Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp. The authors’ aim is to present ...the results of research on the image of the town, as well as activities leading to a change of the unfavourable image of Oświęcim: “a town overshadowed by a museum”. They are included in “The Strategy for Tourism Development in Oświęcim, 2018-2030”, developed with the support of the authors of this article. The paper also presents an analysis of tourism development and tourist assets with respect to using them to create a supplementary offer for tourists visiting the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum.
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