What do you do when a physical record of human atrocity deteriorates on it's own?
Do you save it as it is right now as is? Do you recreate it to show it how it was? Or simply let it go?
In Poland today, weather, age, and visitors are all taking it's toll on the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
According to the director of the memorial, Piotr Cywinski, some 200 million zloty ($96.5 million) is currently needed for repairs. The budget this UNESCO world heritage site and museum gets annually from the Polish government is 10 million zloty per year, and another 10 million is earned from the sale of books and fees for tours and parking.
Exhibits like the two tons of hair shorn from women are fading away into dust. Gas chambers are crumbling into the earth. Even the granite stairs in Nazi headquarters are bowing.
In college, I did extensive research on ethics in World War II. A lot of what I read, wrote, and chose to learn about reflected my interest in humanity. I became misanthropic. For years, I studied how people could become monsters, forced and chosen. But I also learned how they could also rise up and fight. And how they could become guardian angels when confronted with simple ethical dilemmas. There lay the gray foundation to everything human. One of my favorite sayings still is "Hang on tightly. Let go lightly." To know when to hold fast and know when to accept it is gone.
It would be so easy to do nothing and simply let nature take over to erase this dark time. How much does preserving Auschwitz prevent genocides like Bosnia, Rowanda and Darfur from happening? Sadly, it's in our genetic make-up to conquer. That doesn't mean we don't strive to be better. That too is coiled around in our genes.
Washington DC's Holocaust Museum did an amazing job in recreating the mood. But even then, everything is shiny, new and smells clean. It's not the same.
If the international community doesn't make an effort to continue to maintain it - it will either cost much more (eventually) to restore it - or be gone completely. Some 22 million visitors — 700,000 annually—passed through the iron gate crowned with the motto "Arbeit macht frei".
The people who were here are all gone. We have some photos of their faces and bodies which you can see in books and online. But to fully feel and know in your bones what humanity is capable of, we need to preserve what is left - to see, to touch, to hear what we as humans are capable of, both good and bad. We are so often prone to arrogance and excuses when confronted with difficulty. These ruins and relics are soon to be all that remain and we should treasure them closely lest we forget.
