Remembrance on the Sites of Terror: Concentration Camp Memorials in Central Eastern Europe

The project is concerned with contemporary forms of commemoration in museums located on the sites of former concentration and extermination camps. The permanent exhibitions at the “State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau”, the “State Museum at Majdanek” with its department in Bełżec, the “State Museum Stutthof”, as well as the “Museum of Struggle and Martyrdom” in Treblinka will be analyzed. At each of these institutions, interviews with the directors and with employees are to be conducted in order to gain detailed information on the establishment of the current exhibitions, their background, and future changes. Additionally, sites of extermination and of concentration camp memorials in other countries are to be examined. In this context, the main points of focus will be the exhibitions at the memorials in Terezín, Czech Republic, and in Buchenwald, Germany. These two non-Polish examples will be used to show how the musealization of the Holocaust is conducted in Poland’s neighbouring countries in order to demonstrate possible similarities and differences.

Piotr M. Majewski