How Do You Talk About Auschwitz?

My visit to Poland was driven largely by a desire to go to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Saying this to a friend left them a little uneasy, asking (quite reasonably) why would you ‘want’ to go there. That’s not a question I can readily answer. I have no connection to the place. Whilst I'm told there is some Germanic and some Romani blood in the family, It comes from many generations before the war and the camps. I do not know Auschwitz, it does not know me. And yet I had to go.

When I talk about the importance of museums one of the key factors I discuss is the sense of place and there are few places in the world that can convey it in quite the same way. Many historic sites are memorialised because they are sites of tragedy and death. But no other feels quite so close, so large, and so real.

The closest I have got before is the Anne Frank House which uses its thoughtfully empty rooms to tell a part of the same story. And perhaps Auschwitz could have been empty too, with just the power of the knowledge of what happened on that ground just on the edge of living memory. However, time is not kind to memory so the stories we tell and how they are told is important.

Getting to Auschwitz

Getting to the physical location is perhaps appropriately enough something of a dedication you have to make. Located a good hour or so’s drive from any major city and with reasonable but not amazing public transport links to visit is a whole day affair that takes either some significant logistics or signing up with a tour group.

In my case I chose the latter which came with a bus driving you to and between the two locations as well as a tour guide. And a tour guide is very much welcome at Auschwitz (as with most other museums in Poland) as the place itself does not offer a great deal of information.

Image of the Famous Auschwitz Gates reading ‘Work Will Set You Free’ (Image from The National WW2 Museum)

However this was also the issue with my trip. To be frank, our tour guide wasn’t very good. Her English was fine, but she kept repeating information in uninteresting ways. Making points that didn’t really go anywhere and just all in all telling a poor story.

This of course can’t be put against the museum itself. She was (best I can tell) completely unaffiliated, and employed by the tour company. But it is always a risk with any tour guide that how good they are can really make or break an experience.

A Powerful Place

Despite my own personal disappointment with my guide the museum itself stands as a power symbol and reminder of what was done.

For now at least the main camp is largely preserved and much of the rest stands as a kind of stable ruin. Whilst the site was designated as a memorial almost immediately after the war with exhibitions opening as early at 1955 the Polish economy was little able to support full scale preservation efforts and much of it rotted away.

This leads to what was for me the most striking image of the houses on the vast Birkenau camp. Made from wood they have all now rotted away leaving only the meager brick chimney. They stretch on seemingly endlessly, each one representing a huddled mass of more than a hundred people crammed into them who would constantly churn as the dead were replaced by the living.

Image of the rows of chimneys in the Birkenau Camp (Image from Atlas Obscura)

And those people of course had escaped being immediately gassed in the chambers on arrival. The chambers themselves were blown up by the Nazi’s before they abandoned the camp and stand themselves as a powerful relic of the horrors that occurred there.

 

What Can You Do With A Place Like Auschwitz

Trying to do anything with a place like Auschwitz will always cause controversy and both is moral and legal definition as a cemetery and memorial means anything done has to be done with the greatest of respect. Even the gift shop limits its selection to just books.

To this end then there are two main thing that the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum offers beyond just preserving the place. The first is the rooms showing the piles of things looted from the arriving jews. Shoes, Suitcases, Glasses, even hair. Presented mutely in staggeringly large piles as an attempt to convey in some small way the sheer scale of the tragedy.

The other is similar. Any visit starts with a tunnel you must walk through where a voice reads out a list of names of people killed there. This list is presumably near endless and it is a powerful sign to go along with the walls of photographs of people saying simply the date they arrived, and the date they died.

Perhaps one small suggestion, but on the way out you walk through a similar tunnel (it passes under a road between the entrance and the camp itself) which is conspicuously silent. I think that if the list is read there too it might help convey the message that such a list never stops, not for the whole time you are visiting and not for a great deal longer after that.

The Best and Worst Museum in Krakow/Warsaw

I’ve just got back from a little over a week’s trip to Poland split between Krakow and Warsaw and across 5 serious days of visiting things I saw 58 different places with another 2 being added in on travel days and a full day trip for a total of 60 different things and places seen.

Sadly I have to report that very little in the two cities inspired me. Much of it was fairly bog standard ‘stuff’ museums that simply displayed collections of things with very little additional context. This was true from the big museums right the way down to the small. And goodness help you if you didn’t take an audio guide or a tour because then you’d be lucky to have the first clue about what you were looking at.

Still there were a couple that stood out and I can give my best and worst and it's notable that I mentioned both of them in my last blog post about what I wanted to visit.

The Best - POLIN

POLIN is billed as a museum about the existence of the polish jew. Whilst this is not strictly speaking untrue it is more of a museum of the history of Poland but with a significant focus on its Jewish people. 

I saw it on my last day of the trip but in retrospect it should have been my first stop in Warsaw as it provides the perfect primer that covers all of the most important events in Polish history in a fun and engaging way.

Image of the POLIN Museum (Picture From POLIN)

Doing Everything Right

The museum doesn’t do anything particularly new or special, but it does do everything to the very highest quality. The stories are easy to read and cleanly told with plenty of hands-on activities, or additional bits of information if you find something you are particularly interested in.

The real highlight to me is the beautiful surroundings where no expense has been spared. A variety of different themed rooms with beautiful models and scenery pieces really help build the sense of space of different things right down to having different flooring so that you can physically feel the difference between spaces.

Image from the Jewish Town Exhibit (Picture From the Association of European Jewish Museums)

Another big one for me was that the audio guide kept things snappy. It’s a large museum with lots to see. So rather than extending the timing out with an inventory of things in the room it kept to a short script about what the room itself was about before inviting you to either learn more or move on.

Touching on Difficult History

The history of the Jewish in Poland (as with most places) has not been an easy one. However, unlike some of the other Jewish museums in Poland, it managed to not give off a strong feeling of anger, bitterness, or even tubthumping pride in their heritage. These are perhaps not surprising feelings for those affected by such a lineage and I would consider them perfectly natural responses for such persecuted people. 

However, not everyone is always immediately understanding of such things and I believe that it can make a place more difficult to understand and internalise. I’m not suggesting anything like ‘people should make up their own minds about whether murdering over a million people is a good thing’ or even that museums should be neutral on topics. But presenting difficult history, especially when it’s so recent, can be a tricky thing to pull off and POLIN does it wonderfully.

Primarily it does this by considering the greater context of Poland first and then coming down to the level of an individual community and then where appropriate onto the stories of some individuals

The Worst - The Museum of Fantasy Art

I have a funny relationship with art. I’m not really a big art person (despite the amount of galleries that I visit) though I'm constantly searching for that spark that will make me click with contemporary art. This is not (I think) a wholly unusual position and there are plenty of people out there who would be willing to get into art if it was willing to make itself more accessible.

So when I see about The Museum of Fantasy Art, which is a collection of the kind of art you’d expect to see on 80’s Sci-Fi Novel Covers or perhaps more contemporaneously on the face of Magic the Gathering Cards or Video Game artwork then it strikes me as a potential place for people to be able to make that connection far more easily. 

Image of the Gallery (Picture from In Your Pocket)

The throughline of the ‘Worst’ museums however is often disappointment and wasted potential. And the truth here is that ‘The Museum of Fantasy Art’ is nothing of the sort. It’s not a museum, it’s not even really a gallery. Quite honestly it’s a sales gallery masquerading as something different that charges 30 złoty (about £6) for entry!

What could have been a place to start discussion about art in a language that folks are more readily familiar with, things that just look cool or perhaps trying to fit alien worlds, is instead a clinical space where the artwork is simply on the walls, unremarked on.

What am I looking at?

Much of the work comes from two main artists, Dariusz Zawadzki and Jacek Szynkarczuk. But there is nothing about these two people. Why do they draw what they draw? What is their inspiration, was the work made commercially or just for their love of art. What does it mean to draw in this fantasy style?

Like with most galleries there is art there that I like and some that I don’t but there is no context to its existence. It is there purely to be looked at and then, if they can get away with it, selling you a reproduction for between 300-700 złoty (~£60 - £140).

‘The Search for Undiscovered Cathedrals’ one of the images featured in the collection (Picture by Jacek Szynkarczuk)

It is something of a fascination of mine what things are deemed worthy of displaying in museums, especially in art galleries. And with so much incredible work being done by a multitude of effectively unknown artists across the world today this is a bigger question than ever. 

So the Museum of Fantasy Art had two grand potentials here, both in connecting the public to art through a new venue but also in expanding what kind of thing might be considered worthy of display in the first place. I believe it failed on both of these fronts, and perhaps this is a bold new stride in the art world which has sent ripples through it, however that’s not where I stand and to me it is a failure. And frankly I'd like my money back.

Lessons Learned from Krakow/Warsaw

I had warned about the difficulty of trying to compare the best and worst to make a single salient point, but unfortunately there was just such a clear throughline in both Berlin and Amsterdam.

Here the success and failure are on two completely different spectrums but there is perhaps some link in the consideration behind the place. The POLIN is simply the top in its class. It’s a modern museum with modern design sensibilities which has pulled off everything to the smallest detail with excellence which likely belies the careful thought and consideration put into every part of its design. The Museum of Fantasy Art on the other hand either never wanted to be a museum (and may just be trying to cynically make a bit of money) or rather put no consideration into how the public may interact with the space.

Whilst we can’t pretend to always understand or know the thoughts and intentions of others these are key to the success of a place. And it feels like POLIN had lots of the former and good ones at that where The Museum of Fantasy Art struggled with both.

The Polish Museums I Won’t Be Visiting

As this blog is posted I will be in Poland on my annual European city trip. I’ll be in Krakow, primarily as a staging post to visit Auschwitz, spending a few days in the city before catching a train to Warsaw for more museum visiting and general touristing.

Warsaw Old Town (Image from Arian Swegers)

I will no doubt come back with lots of things to talk about including a general summary and a ‘best and worst’. But that will take time, so I thought I’d explain something about how I go about preparing to visit so many museums and perhaps more interestingly why I choose to not visit some. Even at my voracious pace I'm only going to be able to visit a fraction of all the possibilities.

Structured Fun

Picking where to go in particular is largely done on vibes, a large European city somewhere I've never been before. Ideally somewhere that isn’t too expensive to get to and stay. Though for an early January visit that is most of them. I’ve never been to Poland before, so why not there?

Then comes the ‘fun’ part. Using a mixture of google maps, trip advisor, atlas obscura and any other source I can find that is easily accessible I build up a list of all of the museums and other tourist attractions in a city. From here I add information about when it’s open, how much it costs, is it on any museum cards etc.

Section from my Tourism Spreadsheet

Once I’ve done all of this I then go through and rank all of the museums by how much I want to visit them on the following approximate scale based loosely on the original Michelin Star Scale:

5 - Worth a dedicated trip

4 - Worth a detour

3 - Worth it if I'm already nearby

2 - Maybe if it’s enroute to somewhere

1 - Probably not

0 - Not a chance

The 4 and 5 rankings are fairly obvious hitting on the big tourist attractions such as the Polin History Museum or perhaps those catering to my particular interests such as the Museum of Maria Sklodowsk-Curie or the slightly wacky and potentially interesting ones such as the Museum of Fantasy Art.

Decisions Decisions

The obvious first cut are museums that are very similar to one another. There are only so many art galleries, or churches that you can visit before they’re all pretty similar (despite how unique the brochure might claim it is). This is typically where looking for the ones that already bring in the tourists serves me best.

But perhaps the more interesting question is which are the museums with the low scores? Which of the 113 mapped museums, churches, and other places of interest do I not even consider really going to? 

Of course, perhaps for exactly the reasons that I am not interested in those museums should be exactly why I should be visiting. However, this is ultimately a holiday. And I don’t care to spend my time or money visiting them (if you are a book or other kind of company willing to pay me to do visits then send me an email and I'd be happy to)

For Krakow/Warsaw there are few that get the low rating which I can bunch into broad categories:

Uninterested in Topic

(E.g. Legia Museum - Museum of Sport and Tourism)

There are very few topics that I genuinely just don’t care for. But sport is generally one of them, and especially football. I know it’s a bit of a cliché for the tubby nerd to dislike football but it’s a cross I bare willingly.

As such, unless a sports museum is of particular consequence I am very unlikely to visit it. Other examples I've struck off on previous trips include waxwork museums, some kinds of art museums, and a marvel super hero exhibition.

Not a Museum-Museum

(E.g. Arcade Museum - Be Happy Museum)

One day I will write about the rise of the ‘Museum’ that is not at its core a museum. Most notable among these are the ‘Instagram’ museums, most commonly some kind of illusion themed museum. There are not spaces that attempt to do any kind of educational work but rather are places for you to take cool pictures. This is not inherently bad by any means but they are not museums and thus I'm not interested here.

The other side of this are the video game arcades. They masquerade under a veneer of a museum-like archive but they are ultimately video game attractions. Again, this is not inherently bad, they’re great places and I love playing old games and they are important in the preservation cycle. But unless it’s something like the Musée Mécanique in San Francisco it’s not actually a museum.

Dull Vibes

(E.g. Museum of Literature - Earth Museum)

This is a harder category to fit and they are museums that perhaps under other circumstances I might be interested in visiting. But through a mixture of their website, images, and anything else I've come across online (including perhaps comparing it to other similar sites in the city) they just don’t pass the smell test and I feel that my time could be better spent elsewhere.

Mapping

I try to make my initial assessment entirely independently but whilst I'm putting things together I also build up a google map of all of the different places on my spreadsheet.

You can access my maps here for Berlin, Amsterdam, and Warsaw/Krakow.

This then offers something of a practical guide. I’m limited by the hours in a day and it’s much more efficient to be able to visit lots of museums that are near to each other (which helpfully they often are). So by building up a map I can also identify museums that are somewhat out of the way.

Screenshot of the Museum Map of Warsaw

Out of the way does not mean I won’t go, but it does mean that it has to be of significantly more interest as going to one museum an hour's bus or train ride out from the city centre has an opportunity cost and I might have gotten to visit upwards of 5 other museums. So it’s a balancing act.

This realistically then is what culls the majority of places. If it’s not particularly interesting in and of itself and it's not near anything that is, then in my limited time I probably just won't get round to it.

No really… I am spontaneous

I once told a story of the son of a neighbour who was going on a trip to New York and his then boyfriend had planned the whole thing out almost to the minute. Even going so far as to pre-order the drinks they were going to have at a bar on one of the evenings. Somebody then likened this to me and my maps and spreadsheets. I can see why, but I am mortally offended.

From this map and the spreadsheet I have a general direction and a partial plan for my trip. Perhaps on Monday I will do the South West portion from my hotel, on Tuesday the North East. I will only book for places that I absolutely have to and any of the highly rated things I want to see will form the cornerstone of a particular day's visit, including ensuring it will be open on that day.

But beyond that, it really is open. If I decide I want to spend several hours in one museum then that’s absolutely fine. Or if I get to an entrance and decide it looks rubbish I'm happy to leave. Maybe I’ll go on a little side hunt for a particular food, or maybe I'll be so keen to visit a string of museums that I forget about lunch completely. 

My style is not one I would recommend to anyone, and I'm yet to come across anyone with the same stamina for museum visits as me. But it is a true and genuine passion, in these visits I add the museums to a list, not tick them off. I have a rough idea and some resources to support my visits, But I am spontaneous during my holidays… honest.