Selfie in Auschwitz is not always wrong, says spokesperson – 09/11/2023 – Tourism

Upon entering the Auschwitz Museum, in the space where two Nazi Germany concentration camps were located in occupied Poland during World War II, the visitor crosses a sober walkway made of reinforced concrete while the names of Holocaust victims come out of the speakers.

The guide asks for silence during the journey, but not everyone respects the request. We hear conversations about generalities, one and the other pointing out some detail from the time of mass extermination. In all, six million Jews were murdered on the orders of Adolf Hitler, one million at Auschwitz alone.

In April, a photo taken on the rails of the former Birkenau concentration camp, next to Auschwitz, generated revulsion due to the relaxed pose of the portrayed girl: sitting on one of the rails, she had her head reclined back and one hand holding her hair. like you’re in a shampoo commercial.

Earlier, in 2014, an American student from Alabama had already provoked a similar reaction by taking a selfie, smiling and with a smile emoji in the caption, inside where the concentration camp was located.

For Pawel Sawicki, press officer at the Auschwitz Museum, however, these are exceptions. In an interview with Brazilian media outlets, including Sheetthe institution’s official stressed the importance of remembering that that was the place where many were killed, but defended the need to find a balance “to talk about photography as a way to convey emotions”.

“We always ask visitors to keep in mind that their behavior when taking photos can be problematic for others, but it’s not like there’s a line where you can say, ‘OK, now all the selfies are wrong or they’re all good. . It’s more complex.”

Recently, a girl took a photo at the site of the Birkenau concentration camp, which prompted a statement from the Auschwitz Museum. What is being done to avoid situations like this? type?
A selfie is not a terrible thing. Terrible is what happened in the concentration and extermination camps. The selfie is a way people communicate today, and there’s nothing wrong with a selfie per se. But we need to remember that this is a place where over a million people have been murdered. When we talk about photography, we have to look at different approaches, because there are those who think that visitors shouldn’t even be able to take photos. We disagree.

People from all over the world come here, and for many it will be the only time they come. So they take photos, show them to their relatives, post them on social media and talk about what they felt and why this place is so important. There’s nothing wrong with photos like this. In general, we try to pay attention not only to the photo, but to the motivation behind it, because you can take a beautiful photo, with a super professional camera, and then use it to manipulate or distort the story by writing a problematic caption. That is, it is necessary to find a balance to talk about photography as a way to convey emotions.

We always ask visitors to keep in mind that their behavior when taking photos may be problematic for others, but it’s not like there’s a line where you can say, “OK, now all selfies are wrong or they’re all good.” It’s more complex. On our Instagram profile, you can see that we look for photos that people take here and add educational content. So instead of just focusing on the negative example, we try to look at the positive things that people do. But of course, sometimes we have to react when problematic situations happen.

We are approaching the moment of the last generation of Holocaust survivors. What is the museum’s perspective to continue filling this memory?
The presence of the survivors is vital for us because this place was created by them, as a testament. One thing we have done, like other institutions, is collecting testimonies —in text, in video, in 3D, to be displayed as holograms—, and the number of voices we can use is incredible. But we also planned an exhibition with works created by prisoners and survivors, because we noticed that young people, when they meet survivors, don’t ask about facts or dates, but about what they felt about being here. And art is an interesting genre, because you don’t need a language. What I want to say is: we still need testimonies and we have to put them on a pedestal, because they are witnesses to history, but we must think of different ways of maintaining their voices.

You have worked here for 16 years. What changes have you witnessed at the museum since then?
There have been changes in the number of visitors. In 2000, you had less than 500 thousand visitors [por ano]. Before Covid, in 2019, there were 2.3 million visitors [em 2022, ainda na retomada pós-pandemia, o museu recebeu quase 1,2 milhão de visitantes]. There was also a change of generation, and one challenge is precisely the lack of survivors. When we think about young people today, their grandparents were born after World War II, and when we think about the way history is passed down, from generation to generation, it comes through grandparents. So for a lot of young people who come here, it’s no longer a story told around the dinner table, now it comes from books, and that’s a very different relationship when we think about how to communicate with them. In terms of conservation, there have been very significant changes, and we now have a foundation that helps finance the museum. We also have new projects, such as the new visitor center, inaugurated two months ago, with a new cinema.

After all these years of working here, is it still possible to feel optimistic about humanity?
Working in Auschwitz in search of optimism is challenging. I probably feel optimistic about individual human beings, and I think one of the biggest questions we should ask in such a place is what we can do today as individuals to improve the world. Some visitors today question: “Did people know what was happening? Why didn’t they do more to prevent it?” In 30 years there will be new memorials, and these questions will reappear. So, in relation to humanity, I have a more complex view, but I know that individuals, when they find motivation, when they think they are doing something good, can do absolutely a lot.

The journalist traveled at the invitation of the São Paulo Holocaust Memorial with support from the Polish government