My younger brother and I grew up in a perfect world - no Auschwitz, no Holocaust and no Nazis. Though I was a real bookworm, I somehow never read books about the Holocaust. During Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremonies, I maintained a pose of deliberate indifference.

Even though I am an investigative reporter who tries to learn as much as possible about my subjects, I didn't know a thing about my father's relatives. I was unaware that they had perished in the war and so I was sure that if I just tried hard enough, I'd manage to find them. Throughout my childhood, I was on the lookout for my grandmother, my father's mother. I scanned the newspapers, including the obituary notices, for any mention of her name. I yearned to catch a glimpse of her on television or to hear some word of her on the radio. I'd spend hours daydreaming about how she'd suddenly show up one day, radiant and beautiful, with her two lost children. Until last week, I was sure that I'd find her someday. Only then, on the day before I left for Auschwitz on assignment for this newspaper, did my father tell me that his mother had died on the day of her arrival in Auschwitz.

I was apprehensive about the trip. I was sure that I'd break down, that I wouldn't be able to write a word. To my amazement, the nine hours of my visit to Auschwitz turned out to be among the happiest of my life. Perhaps because only there did I realize how far removed I am from those horrors, how different my life is - how I managed to be different, optimistic, loving, happy.

The professional objective of the visit was to check out reports about the deterioration of the remains of Auschwitz and its exhibits due to the ravages of time, budget shortfalls and international apathy. And so I came to see Witold Smrek, chief conservator of the Auschwitz-Birkenau site. He told me how, just the week before, he had suddenly found a fragment of a human bone at the edge of the Birkenau camp, not far from the remains of the crematoria. The discovery did not startle him; there are thousands of such fragments scattered in the earth of Birkenau.

Something prompted me to take the piece of bone that Smrek found. When I got home to Givatayim, I buried it in the backyard in what I suppose was a kind of private gesture to my grandmother. But what about the rest of the remains? Who will worry about them? On my visit, I saw that Auschwitz is literally crumbling in a seemingly inexorable process of disintegration. Within 10 years, the most tangible evidence of what happened in the camp that became a symbol of the Holocaust of European Jews could vanish forever. And not much is being done to stop it.

Approximately one and a quarter million human beings were murdered at Auschwitz and Birkenau, most of them Jews. "Just as the survivors are dying off and it won't be many years until there are no more people alive with numbers on their arms, the camp is also going to disappear," says Prof. Robert Jan van Pelt of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, who has written a book about Auschwitz and was a consultant to the Polish government regarding its preservation. "It's impossible to preserve Auschwitz. This camp has no future."

Thousands of human bone shards are strewn in the earth of Birkenau, and they have been preserved despite the ravages of time and weather. Most of the other remains of Auschwitz, however, are steadily decaying. The display of hair taken from the victims at Auschwitz hardly resembles human hair now. The victims' toothbrushes and shoes are disintegrating, their prison uniforms are full of holes and the wooden clogs they wore are cracked and broken.

The fence posts that surrounded the camp are leaning perilously, the wooden barracks of Birkenau are rotted, the remnants of the crematoria are crumbling and rare historical documents with Mengele's signature are yellowed and faded.

Some of the exhibits are beyond any hope of preservation: One touch and they will disintegrate completely. For other exhibits, preservation would be very expensive. And the world is in no hurry to raise money to preserve the concentration camp that became most synonymous with the Holocaust. Ten years ago, Yitzhak Rabin promised to designate $100,000 of the state budget for the camp's preservation, but Israel has never transferred any funds for this purpose. For the past seven years, two American Jews, both Holocaust survivors, have been traveling the world trying to raise money to preserve the camp. Working on behalf of the Lauder Foundation, Ernest Michel and Kalman Sultanik have managed to raise $23 million from 11 countries. Sultanik estimates that another $40 million is necessary to do a thorough job of preservation. In 2003, the Polish government allocated $2 million for maintenance and the salaries of the museum's 240 employees. Only a small portion of this money is designated for preservation.

UNESCO has added Auschwitz to its World Heritage list, but it does not contribute any funds for preservation. American Jews are not lining up to donate money to preserve the camp. Most feel that this should be the job of the German government. Germany recently transferred $10 million to the museum, but some believe that it's not in Germany's interest to forever perpetuate the memory of the horrors of the Holocaust. The world has forgotten about Auschwitz, says Franciszek Cemka, director of the museum division of the Polish Ministry of Arts and Culture. "Americans have other topics that they're more interested in. Well-off Europe has forgotten the sights of the war."

Preservation means extending life for as long as possible, but that's as far as it can go, says architect Michael Turner, a lecturer at the Bezalel Academy of Art and chairman of the Israeli chapter of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee. "After us, there will be another generation that will perhaps give expression to the camp in a different way." Preservation is meant to delay natural processes for a time, but not forever, says Witold Smrek, who reckons that within 10 years, the enormous mass of human hair and the remains of the crematoria will completely disintegrate. "As someone who works in preservation, I know that the percentage of original exhibits will continue to decline," he says.

Now that some of the exhibits at Auschwitz are destined to disappear, the time has come to think about how to give the Holocaust other visual expressions, says Prof. Israel Gutman, the chief historian of Yad Vashem and vice-chairman of the International Auschwitz Council.

One exhibit that draws many spectators is a large display case containing close to two tons of hair that was shorn from the heads of camp inmates. The hair is in terrible condition. Here and there, one can make out a thin braid, a lock of blond hair or some black curls, but for the most part, it looks like a huge mound of scraggly and faded wool. Smrek explains that insects, especially moths, were infesting the hair, so it was treated with naphthalene during occasional "dustings" - when the hair was spread out on vibrating screens to release dust particles and other debris. After every cleaning, however, the hair became more faded and brittle. The last cleaning was 10 years ago.

"Today, it's very difficult to clean the hair," says Smrek. "This hair has been dead for 50 years and any preservation method could cause a lot of it to be lost for good. It's a very sensitive subject. The basic rule in preservation is not to make the situation worse, and if we were to touch the hair, it could end up in worse condition. Any type of preservation would cost a lot of money. In the future, it won't look anything like hair. Within 10 or 20 years, this hair will turn to dust."

Jerzy Wroblewski, director of the Auschwitz museum, believes that the problems involved in preserving the hair are not merely technical, but primarily ethical and philosophical. "Hair is part of the human body and therefore it isn't appropriate to put it on display," he says. "After a process of international consultation and deliberation, it should be buried in a special ceremony and given the appropriate honor. Before the hair is buried, it should be photographed and the photos should be displayed as proof of the extermination. At the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, they exhibit photos that were taken here and it makes a very strong impression."

Shevah Weiss, Israel's ambassador to Poland, disagrees and feels that the hair ought to be preserved by every possible means. "The hair exhibit encapsulates the human horror. We must preserve it so as not to give the Holocaust deniers any help."

Samieska says she does all she can to preserve the shoes. She lives in the town of Oswieciem. She relates that during the war, the Germans conscripted her father as a forced laborer and her husband was a prisoner at Auschwitz. "I feel connected to this place," she says. Does she feel any guilt that such a terrible genocide occurred just a short distance from her home? "Why should I feel guilty?" Samieska replies. "I'm glad that my family survived. A lot of Polish families did not survive the war."

The shoes that are on display are in even worse condition. Most are in the process of disintegrating, and all are covered with a thick layer of dust.

"There isn't proper air-conditioning in the exhibition hall and that's why they're in such a bad state," says Samieska.

Several attempts have been made to preserve them, however. Until about 10 years ago, the shoes were rinsed in a round tank similar to a washing machine. Various chemicals were added to soften and shine them. By the time the last cleaning was done, the shoes were in such a bad state and had become so delicate that many were completely ruined. Smrek then decided to try another cleaning method. In the mid-1990s, a group of German and Polish volunteers began to clean the shoes by hand. Using special brushes and polish, they cleaned about a fifth of the shoes, "but it was very hard and tiring work and they couldn't do any more," says Smrek.

A small number of shoes have been sent to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, where they are being carefully studied in an attempt to find the most suitable cleaning method. "It's not possible to do that kind of research on each one of the 60,000 shoes," says Smrek. A Polish preservation institute recently proposed a method to rid the shoes of bugs and bacteria using lasers and radioactive material such as uranium or cobalt.

"They used this method on shoes that were found at Madjanek and it was proven effective," says Smrek. "But that only solves the cleaning problem, not the problem of preservation and of preventing disintegration. This method will only be put into regular use two years from now, as the museum is renovated and air-conditioning is installed in the exhibition rooms. And then we'll still have to pack up all the shoes to transport them to the institute and then return them to the museum after the preservation process. It's not a simple operation."

Besides the shoes, the warehouse also holds dozens of large sacks filled with thread and fabric that belonged to tailors who arrived at the camp with their sewing supplies. "There's no simple answer to the question of whether we need to preserve this," says Wroblewski. "There are different views. Some people think that one shouldn't tamper with the effects of time. The museum's view is that this place and all the objects in it should be preserved in the most authentic condition possible for as long as possible, since this is the best proof there is of what happened here."

The clothing and talitot (prayer shawls) that the prisoners left behind are an especially sensitive matter. Several prayer shawls are on display, but most are kept on wooden rollers in the storage room. Samieska says they haven't been laundered in about 20 years. "They used to clean the clothes and the prayer shawls. Now the only preservation method is to store them in an air-conditioned room. Touching them at all would damage them," she says.

The museum staff has found it particularly difficult to preserve the thousands of toothbrushes left behind by the victims. "Because of the weather conditions and the amount of time that has passed, a mysterious chemical process suddenly began that caused the toothbrushes to be ruined," says Smrek. "The material from which the toothbrushes are made is similar to that of photographic negatives, and it simply began to disintegrate." Some toothbrushes were sent to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, but the experts there fared no better in trying to halt their disintegration.

"A while ago, we sent the whole collection to a Polish preservation institute," says Smrek. "They discovered a chemical cleaning method and guaranteed that the brushes would remain in good condition in the future, too." But it's impossible to know how long the toothbrushes will survive. "No museum in the world has ever had to contend with this problem, so it's hard to know how to handle it."

The condition of the documents found at the camp is equally serious. Thousands of rare documents, some signed by the notorious Dr. Mengele, were discovered in Auschwitz after the war. To these were added numerous documents sent to the museum by the families of survivors, including telegrams that prisoners had sent from the camp and many photographs. Many of these are faded and falling apart. "We only manage to preserve a small quantity of the documents," says Dr. Piotr Setkiewicz, director of the museum's archives. "The preservation methods are very expensive and around here there isn't sufficient information about the proper means of preservation. Documents are continuously disintegrating and in a few more years, they'll be in such bad condition that it will be impossible to preserve them. Books that were printed on a similar kind of paper disintegrated after 70 years."

Most of the documents have been transferred to microfilm. The originals are kept in cardboard binders in a small room where the temperature is kept at 16 degrees Celsius. They are sorted according to how urgently they need preservation. Several hundred documents are in very poor shape, with torn edges and lots of yellow blotches. "There is only one preservation company around here that we trust," says Smrek. "And it can only preserve a certain number of documents. We could have sold some documents and used the money to preserve others, but I don't even think about doing that. These documents must remain here. I feel an obligation toward them."

The barbed wire is stretched out over 3,600 concrete posts, most of which are now leaning precariously. It costs $450 to preserve one post. In 1997, the German government gave $10 million to preserve the concrete posts. The museum began the preservation work in 1998. "The idea is to preserve the posts so that they'll look authentic," says Smrek. The concrete posts are built around heavy steel rods. These rods are rusted and decaying, and the surrounding concrete is also starting to crumble. "There were all kinds of ideas for preservation," says Smrek. "One proposal was to demolish the existing posts, grind up the concrete and use it to produce new posts from the original material."

Dr. Moshe Puterman of the National Building Research Institute at the Technion arrived at Auschwitz three years ago with an idea that he says could ensure the stability of the posts for many years to come. "I proposed that the posts be impregnated with a stabilizing polymer. One of the questions about preserving the posts is whether they should be preserved as they were in the past when they were new or as they are now. I think they should be preserved as they are now, otherwise, they'll seem new and that will serve the Holocaust deniers who'll say that we built a new camp because no such camps existed. It's a philosophical issue, not just a technical one."

Puterman is now spending a sabbatical year in Germany. He was born in a refugee camp in Germany after the war. "My parents escaped from Poland to the Soviet Union and that's how they managed to survive the Holocaust. I didn't experience the Holocaust personally, but when I examined the posts, I caressed them. Each post holds the soul of our people and of other peoples who were murdered there. Every one of these posts, especially at Birkenau, was built with the blood of Jews. They must be preserved - because without these posts, it would look like a Boy Scout camp. When you see the posts, it really hits you. It's the strongest thing that you take away from there. If this isn't taken care of properly, before long there won't be any more posts or any more camp."

Puterman's suggestion was ultimately rejected. "We understood that the Germans who were funding the project did not want to get into long-term investments. Our proposal would have been very expensive. They preferred to give it a cosmetic treatment that will last only five or ten years," the professor says in a phone conversation from Germany.

"We didn't opt for Puterman's proposal because in order to carry it out, we would have had to uproot all the posts from their places and transport them to Germany," Smrek says. The method that was chosen instead is called hydrophobization. The inner steel posts were injected with a special material intended to eliminate the rust.

Bits of the original concrete that fell from the posts were put back in place with a special glue. The restoration of each post takes about two months. So far, about 800 posts have been restored. Smrek hopes that all of them will be restored by 2004.

"Whenever it's very cold outside, I think about the prisoners who had to cope with the cold dressed only in their striped prison uniforms," says Smrek. "I wonder how they worked outside in the terrible cold. It's always colder at Birkenau than anywhere else around. They couldn't even heat the barracks."

Smrek, a resident of Oswieciem, says that he feels connected to the camp's history. "My grandfather was a prisoner here. From Auschwitz, he was taken to Mauthausen, where he died. I never met him. My uncle arrived in Auschwitz on the first transport. His number was 700. After the war, he was a changed person. Today, we live a normal life without guilt feelings. We couldn't have done anything. We suffered, too. The Germans didn't ask us if we wanted the camp to be built here. They came and evicted the residents from their homes and built the camp here."

Once the fence is restored, work will begin on preservation of the Auschwitz crematorium. Before they abandoned Auschwitz, the Nazis destroyed the gas chambers and the crematoria. The ruins of these structures remain, bearing witness to the killing that took place in them. In recent years, the wind, rain and snow have seriously eroded the stone blocks and steel rods that formed the base of the crematorium.

A similar problem exists regarding the wooden barracks that once housed prisoners in Birkenau. At the end of the war, there were 40 such barracks in the camp. They were built like horse stables and not designed to last. Over time, humidity, rain and snow caused them to collapse. Twenty new barracks were built from the remains of the original structures. Now they, too, are decaying. Preserving their absolute authenticity is simply not possible.

While the museum staff is convinced that they are doing important, even holy work, other views have also been heard recently. "It's ridiculous that they spent so much money on preservation. There's no point in all the vast efforts being invested in preserving the camp," says Prof. van Pelt of the University of Waterloo. "It's impossible to preserve Auschwitz. This is a huge camp that is affected by severe weather that impairs all preservation efforts. The visitors who come to view the site for emotional reasons also damage the site.

"In order to preserve the crematorium, people must be prohibited from entering it. A fence should be built around it to prevent visitors from lighting candles there and from touching the remains. I understand that some people come there and want to say kaddish and pray and light candles, but the site cannot bear this.

"There's also a problem with the Israeli teenagers who come to tour the place. When a group of Israeli schoolkids comes to see the gas chambers and a Polish guard tells them not to step on the ruins, they have a proprietary feeling about the place. Are they really expected to listen to what a Pole tells them to do? They have prejudices against the Poles and they're not ready to take orders from them, so they climb on the ruins and destroy them. I've seen it with my own eyes. Yes, the place has emotional significance for them, but the result is that no one is obeying the rules and the place is being destroyed. In another five years, you won't be able to see anything there."

Another problem is the proximity of the town of Oswieciem to the camp, says van Pelt. "In the end, it's the Poles and the local residents who will have to preserve the site, and they're not doing it. The Oswieciem residents feel sorry for themselves because their town is associated with the place. Some of the residents were evicted from their homes during the war so that the camp could be built and they didn't receive compensation, like the Palestinians with you. The only way for the place to be preserved is if the local population sees that preserving the camp would be good for them. If it were like Disneyland, if they made some profit from it - like the population of the old city of Acre. Not one of the half million visitors who comes to the place leaves a single penny here. The town residents don't profit at all from the camp. It's just a burden on them. Visitors just want to flee the place. They don't want to eat in restaurants in Oswieciem or to stay in a hotel there. This is the main contradiction that impedes the preservation concept.

"We have to accept the fact that the site is going to disappear," says van Pelt. "Let's not make heroic efforts to restore it. Let's not pretend that we can preserve Auschwitz beyond what is really possible. Let's accept the fact that things disappear. Within a few years, there won't be any more living survivors with numbers on their wrists and this place will also be gone. I don't see any other possibility."

"It's ridiculous to spend so much money on preservation. There's a better way to spend the money. It would be better to give scholarships to Holocaust researchers or to Yad Vashem or to projects that deal with education. You won't get anything in return for all this financial investment. It's not a happy conclusion. It saddens me as well. I've studied the place for 15 years, but there's no other way. Within a few years, the place will be ruined, and we'll remember what happened here through books and films."

"Actually, they already use Auschwitz for their purposes," replies van Pelt. "They take soil from the place and claim that, based on scientific tests, they can see that the Holocaust did not occur. If the camp disappears, it will be harder for them."

Given the fact that part of the collection is already irretrievably decaying, other visual expressions of the Holocaust must be created, says Prof. Gutman. This could be done in an artistic manner, using modern means, so that the younger generation finds them more accessible, he suggests.

"In order to preserve the shoes and the hair, you have to consult with international experts and find the right people and invite them to come. It's hard because most of the people at the museum only speak Polish. The Poles are not expert fund-raisers. This will make preservation more difficult."

The principal fund-raisers are Sultanik and Michel, Holocaust survivors from New York who work for the Ron Lauder Foundation. "I was at Auschwitz a few years ago. I saw what's happening there and I told Ron Lauder. He said: `Ernie, I'm paying. You just go raise the money,'" says Michel, who is an executive consultant to the UJA Federation in New York.

"We contacted every country in Europe from which prisoners were deported to Auschwitz. The contributions ranged from tens of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars." The question of whether Israel should be involved in the preservation of the camp is a matter of controversy. "Rabin promised me $100,000 as a symbolic participation by Israel in the preservation. I've since written to Yad Vashem and the Finance Ministry, and they told me that they know about this, but they haven't given the money. Every office I contact sends me to another office. I'm trying to be practical. Israel has other problems, but a commitment is a commitment."

The matter is not the responsibility of the Israeli government, says Avner Shalev, chairman of Yad Vashem and a member of the International Auschwitz Council that was established by the Polish government 10 years ago. "Israel has its own crises and problems," he observes.

The council convenes twice a year. It has two other Israeli members - Gutman and Noah Flug, secretary-general of an umbrella organization of Holocaust survivors. "The issue of preservation has not come up at any meeting. I don't have a lot to say about the preservation of Auschwitz because we don't handle that. Germany, Poland and UNESCO are the ones who should be active on the preservation issue."

In 1972, UNESCO formulated the World Heritage Convention, which stipulates that the 730 sites considered part of the world's cultural heritage, including Auschwitz, be given special international attention. Israel ratified the convention just three years ago, "which means that Israel's representatives were not given the chance to take part in international discussions about the future of Auschwitz," says Turner, chairman of Israel's World Heritage Committee. "The state's position today is not to intervene in what's happening there. As far as preservation goes, the money must be invested wisely both in relation to the site and to the country. In countries where the residents earn one dollar a day, it's hard to invest a lot of money in preservation. The financial balance has to make sense. But anyway, it's the Poles' responsibility."

But Poland doesn't seem to be very enthusiastic about the task. The Ministry of Arts and Culture in downtown Warsaw is housed in the former Potocki Palace. Dozens of rooms line the long, sumptuously carpeted hallways. In a side room far from the entrance sits Franciszek Cemka, who heads the ministry's department of museums. He speaks at length about his commitment to Auschwitz.

"I go there 10 times a year and bring people I know there," he says. "I can't envision Poland without Auschwitz." But in the guide to Polish museums published last year by the ministry, the museum at Auschwitz is afforded less space than the textile museum in Lodz. "If they were to hold a referendum in Poland, the majority might not want these camps to exist," says Shevah Weiss. Perhaps because if Auschwitz didn't exist, all the negative attitudes toward us might not exist either, acknowledges Cemka.

Source:
Sara Leibovich-Dar
The article was also published in Ha'aretz on 20-12-2002