17 November 2008

International Auschwitz Council convened in warszaw. The session dealt especially with the rapid decay of the remaining structures in Birkenau

On 17 November the International Auschwitz Council convened in Warsaw. The council is appointed by the Polish government and includes the IAC representatives Noach Flug, Marian Turski, Kazimierz Albin and Christoph Heubner. It is headed by Professor Wladyslaw Bartoszewski. The session dealt especially with the rapid decay of the remaining structures in Birkenau: in this context Director Piotr Cywinski reported about the work that has started on securing the ruins of the gas chambers and Crematorium 3 in Birkenau. During the work a thimble and a little white porcelain cat were found in the earth. They presumably belonged to a child who held on to them tightly right up to the end. At the end of the discussion Marian Turski made a spontaneous appeal:

"A shout, a cry goes out from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial. The remaining objects are at great risk. If we don’t launch an intense conservation campaign straight away, the barracks, the artefacts and the other remaining objects will very soon start to collapse.

The Auschwitz deniers would gloat triumphantly: no more existing proof of the genocide, no more existing proof of the Holocaust. Do we really want to be witnesses of this disaster? It will take a large amount of money, about 60 million euros: that’s a lot of money, but not more than the financial aid being granted to the banks that currently lie in ruins. Auschwitz-Birkenau was not just an unimaginable horror and catastrophe for Jews, Sinti amd Roma, for Polish people, Russian prisoners and many other victims. No, it was – and let us be quite open about this – a tragedy for the whole of Europe, a tragedy for which in the final instance the whole of Europe bears responsibility.

This is why we, the survivors of Auschwitz and Birkenau, hope that the preservation of the Museum, this place of remembrance and evidence, will be adopted as a task by the ‘government of Europe’. In other words: the European Commission and the European Parliament."

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