Auschwitz, Poland, and the Politics of Commemoration, 1945–1979. Jonathan Huener

      The 1970s were a relatively tranquil decade for the State Museum at Auschwitz, but as the final chapter explains, forces were underway that would compel the memorial site to respond to an ever-growing variety of commemorative constituencies and external pressures, both domestic and foreign. These forces would converge on the occasion of Pope John Paul II’s visit to Auschwitz in 1979, a turning point in the history of the memorial site. This pilgrimage, on the one hand, marked the triumph of Polish-national (and Polish-Catholic) perceptions of Auschwitz and its legacy. On the other hand, the papal visit further democratized the commemorative space at Auschwitz, legitimized it as an arena for antiestablishment protest, and, in a sense, freed the site from the ideological strictures and politicized cant of previous decades. By “liberating” the memorial site in this way, the pope’s visit was the first stage in the collapse of the memorial framework erected at Auschwitz over the previous thirty-five years and also signaled the advent of controversies and debates over Auschwitz that have been characteristic of the present era.

      Foremost among these debates was the highly publicized Carmelite Convent controversy, which brought the problems of contested memory at Auschwitz—along with the burdens of Polish-Jewish relations—into the international public view. Although the controversy, which is addressed briefly in the epilogue, began in the mid-1980s, it belongs thematically to the current era of what some might designate the “postcommunist” memorial site. Heated international exchanges about Jewish, Polish, or international “proprietorship” over the site, the presence of religious symbols at Auschwitz, the use of the grounds and structures of the former camp complex for more “everyday” purposes, a memorial site and museum in full view of the international media—these are phenomena that we associate with the convent controversy, but they are no less characteristic of the site in the 1990s and today. For that reason, the convent controversy is an appropriate vehicle for problematizing the proliferation of memories, competing memorial agendas, and ideological struggles that have emerged in the last decade. Recent conflicts over Auschwitz have not been sudden and spontaneous eruptions of Jewish-Catholic tension or merely a manifestation of animosity between Poles and Jews; rather, they are a reflection and registration of diverse emplotments and historical misunderstandings associated with Auschwitz memory at the site since the 1940s. Thus, the arguments set forth in this study are relevant to the most recent history of the Auschwitz site, and the conclusions suggest both the need for and a path toward further investigation in the years ahead.

      Have fifty years made such a difference? Walter Benjamin observed that the dead are not safe from politics,³ and this has certainly held true at Auschwitz, more than half a century after the killing there ceased. Pedagogy and topography, modes of commemoration and reflection at the memorial site remain matters of controversy and debate. Ultimately, the postwar history of Auschwitz reveals the futility of upholding a single commemorative interpretation of the site or seeking any redemptive perspective whatsoever in its history. Despite its efforts, the Polish government repeatedly failed to create a single and common mode of collective memory at Auschwitz. Moreover, increasing numbers of visitors, ongoing research, and new forms of commemorative practice will undoubtedly render public manifestations of Auschwitz memory yet more diverse in the years to come. Can Auschwitz, more than fifty years after its liberation, “speak for itself?” We live in an era of growing interest in the ways in which cultures and states have chosen to recall, commemorate, and distort their pasts, and the shapes and uses of memory at the State Museum at Auschwitz prompt us to reflect upon this question. The site most certainly has its own eloquence, but its meaning will undoubtedly remain subject to both our awareness of its history and the shifting contours of its memorial landscape.