The Future of Auschwitz

[Peter Fredlake]

Here is a link to an artcle from the National Post, a Toronto newspaper: an interview with Robert Jan van Pelt about the meaning and the future of Auschwitz. http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1411430
I have also posted it as a pdf.
The writer deceives us with the title --- van Pelt finds no 'architectural beauty' in Auschwitz --- but once you get through some deliberately provocative statements, van Pelt raises questions about how we ought to think about what remains of Auschwitz, Holocaust tourism, and memory.

[Pier Marton]

Not my taste necessarily: there is a detachment to this writer's comment that is almost flippant, as if anything could come out of his mouth, to stimulate the reader.

There are serious issues about preserving the "spirit" of this place so one can look into the abyss, just like at the Grand Canyon, if one leaves the postcard booth and walks to a place of solitude, at the edge... one can encounter "one's deeper self", a larger version of oneself than what one generally carries around.
This is the vertigo that can be offered by "Auschwitz", if one is careful about preserving its terrible "character".
It is noteworthy to see how quickly a(n antiSemitic - that's what it is about) denier shows up (in the comments) to deny the whole murderous enterprise.

My grandmother died there in the Auschwitz gas chamber, according to an eyewitness living now in Israel. This topic is not a place for conjectures.