Life in the Shadow of Death

This quaint city boasts a duke’s castle with a 13th century red-brick tower, a mix of historic edifices, and window planters overflowing with petunias and geraniums.

Were it not for what lies across the Sola River, Oswiecim (pronounced osh-VYEN-chim) would seem entirely normal. That’s certainly what the city leaders want tourists to feel.

But for most people--if they know about the city at all--”Oswiecim” equals “Auschwitz” equals “death camp.”

About 500,000 people a year come to the camp complex. Whether they come to grieve or to acknowledge the enormity of its horrors, to satisfy historical curiosity or mere touristic impulse, they are drawn by what the Germans called Auschwitz, not what Poles have called Oswiecim since long before the Nazis came.

Eyeing those visitors, the civic leaders of Oswiecim, a city of 44,000, see opportunity. They see some of those people being enticed to tarry more than a few hours, perhaps to spend more money--instead of hurrying back to spend the night in nearby Krakow, Poland’s beautiful capital of the Middle Ages. In essence, they’d like to convince the world that there’s more to Oswiecim than Auschwitz.

Given the death camp’s long association with evil and horror, their goal might seem quixotic--or even indecent. But it’s an association thrust on them, say the people of Oswiecim, and why shouldn’t they reach for their slice of normality?

“We would like to build a hotel so the tourists stay here,” said Deputy Mayor Kazimierz Plonka, 63. “We’re looking for an investor. We’re trying to renovate the old town.”

But look at what happened when Oswiecim Mayor Jozef Krawczyk, 49, greeted some foreign visitors earlier this year. “I welcomed them to the hospitable soil of Oswiecim and said I would like for them to feel good here,” he said.

“To my surprise,” he said, he was told “that this is improper, to wish anybody a good feeling in Oswiecim and to speak about the hospitable soil of Oswiecim.”

The fact that Krawczyk was surprised underlines the dilemma. Almost any outsider would be more surprised that the mayor could unwittingly call land connected with the worst mass murders of the 20th century “hospitable soil.”

While city leaders and opinion-makers have some awareness that attracting tourists into town is a sensitive issue, few seem to understand just what a narrow tightrope they are walking.

“Maybe we have to develop facilities for tourists but not advertise it too much,” suggested Albert Bartosz, 31, a local radio news reporter. “What I know is that tourists come and they leave, leaving hardly a trace. They don’t stay here. They don’t leave their money here.”

Few visitors to Auschwitz ever consider heading in to this 800-year-old southern city because they either don’t know that it exists or, if they find out, they don’t much care.

“I came to Krakow specifically to see these camps,” Heraldo Hernandez, 27, a Mexico City lawyer, said outside the gate of Auschwitz II-Birkenau. “I didn’t know that there is a town. I think the most important thing is the camp.”

The camp complex was made up of Auschwitz I, with the words “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Brings Freedom) on its gate; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, where most of the mass killings occurred; Auschwitz III-Monowitz, where prisoners mostly were worked to death; and more than 40 sub-camps.

Historians estimate that between 1.1 million and 1.5 million people, about 90% of them Jewish, were killed in Auschwitz on Nazi orders during Germany’s World War II occupation of Poland. The death toll included about 75,000 Roman Catholic Poles and 20,000 Roma, or Gypsies.

Controversies Have Hindered City’s Plans

The city’s determination to do something to change its image also is frustrated by seemingly endless international controversies involving its relationship with the camps.

A private project to build a mini-mall across from the entrance to the Auschwitz I camp was first approved by local authorities, then blocked in 1996 after it provoked international protests by Jewish organizations. The developer is still trying to move forward with a revised plan focused more narrowly on serving visitors to the camp.

Plans for a discotheque initially were derailed after the International Youth Meeting Center in Oswiecim, an organization that sponsors Polish-German reconciliation and Christian-Jewish dialogue, objected to having it next door. But the disco was suddenly opened this month by a new investor, triggering renewed controversy.

There also was a lengthy dispute over relocation of a convent for Carmelite nuns that had been set up next to Auschwitz I.

Global Image of Polish Anti-Semitism

Since 1988, a large cross that Pope John Paul II used in 1979 during a Mass at Auschwitz II-Birkenau has stood just outside the Auschwitz I camp, in a former gravel yard where 152 Catholic Poles were killed by the Nazis in 1941. Last year and the year before, over the opposition of Poland’s Catholic bishops, fundamentalist Catholics and right-wing fringe groups erected hundreds of additional crosses in the area. Authorities have now removed all but the papal cross.

These incidents contributed to an international image of Polish anti-Semitism, or at least of local insensitivity to the special significance of the death camps as the world’s largest Jewish cemetery. But in Oswiecim, many people interpreted these events as an indication that the world would not let them live normal lives.

Oswiecim is determined to do more in “strengthening positive tendencies in the world and fighting anti-Semitism, xenophobia and intolerance toward people of different religions,” Krawczyk said.

In September, the city will host a conference of “peace messenger cities,” with representatives expected from dozens of cities, including Hiroshima, he said. Other activities have included a young musicians workshop that produced a CD called “Way of Hope” and an international film festival. Last month, the city was the site of an international children’s peace festival, a weeklong event of friendship, folklore and peace appeals.

“Our slogans are ‘To Love a Man,’ or, like for this children’s festival, ‘Give Peace to the World,’ ” said Ryszard Strutynski, director of the Oswiecim Cultural Center. “About 60 years ago, all human rights were trampled, and I think it is from this city that we should shout very loudly in protection of those rights.”

Strutynski added that “this change of image should also help the city develop.”

“Maybe it doesn’t sound very nice,” Strutynski said. “It’s a little like using what happened in the past to promote those peace activities. But people should come here to learn, to meet and to fight for peace, so that what happened in Oswiecim--and more recently in Kosovo and in Africa--isn’t repeated.”

Oswiecim as ‘Parody of a Peace Town for Jews’

Sebastian Lawczys, 23, a camp tour guide, said he believes that the controversies of recent years should serve as a warning to city officials. Oswiecim’s effort to be a city promoting peace is a good idea, he said. But unless it is carried out with greater international consultation than seen so far, it could provoke a backlash, he said.

“Let’s hope Oswiecim will not be a parody of a peace town for Jews,” Lawczys said.

“That’s why we have to cooperate. They may think: ‘Oh, it is to hush up the atrocities committed here. It is to hush up Polish anti-Semitism.’ I already hear such things. The motives are good. But it was the same with the sisters in the convent--they wanted to pray for the dead.”

Beyond the obvious image problem, Oswiecim also suffers from the fact that it’s nothing very special.

The central market square is a pleasant enough place where passersby sit under huge red umbrellas to enjoy snacks or beer. But like many small Polish towns, the middle of the square is marred by an ugly Communist-era store built of concrete. This one sells kitchen appliances and electronic goods.

The best hotel in Oswiecim, the unfortunately named Hotel Glob, doesn’t help matters. It’s located in a noisy spot next to the train station, on the same side of the river as the camps. A pool table in the lobby typifies its atmosphere, and the decor of its rooms bespeaks its Communist past.

Growing Up in Oswiecim During War

The problems facing Oswiecim are discouraging to some of its young people. “It’s hard not to have an impression that all one can see here is barbed wire, barracks and the railway leading to the Gate of Death,” a university student complained in a letter published in the local newspaper. “I am a young person, and, like many of my age, we look around and decide that Oswiecim is becoming a town without a future.”

Plonka, the deputy mayor, is old enough to have experienced life in Oswiecim while the camps were still operating, but despite the memories of horror, he never considered moving away, he said.

“I think the awareness of what this camp really is started reaching people like me when the piles of bodies were being burned,” said Plonka, who was a boy when the war ended.

“You could smell the burning bodies. The awareness came. But parents usually kept their children from saying anything. Saying ‘Auschwitz,’ ‘Jews’ or ‘murder’ meant we could find ourselves behind barbed wire. So we kept our mouths shut.”

Only a Few People Have Left the City

Later, as a teenager and young man, “I wanted to go to school, play ball, chase young girls,” he said. “The problem we’re talking about didn’t touch us.”

Plonka thinks that most of the city’s youth today aren’t much different. “If there were jobs available, I don’t think they would be bothered by it,” he said.

Marek Lach, 30, a city employee who runs a Web site providing information about Oswiecim, said he once thought of leaving but stayed, partly because he likes the town.

Among his childhood friends, “I’m sure there are those who left because they didn’t want to be associated with it,” he added. “But that’s a very small number of people.

“I think, apart from sporadic events like the disco, the camp doesn’t really bother the city. But in a way it does block its development. People are afraid to invest here.”

The people of Oswiecim “have embedded in us this feeling that we know what happened here,” said Bartosz, the local radio news reporter. “We agree that the memory should be kept. [But] it’s like the situation of a doctor who treats cancer: ‘Another death.’ He doesn’t react the way an ordinary person would.”