Seeing Auschwitz

Today I had the privilege of seeing an incredibly powerful exhibition on its closing day. Seeing Auschwitz first opened in January 2020 in New York and Paris, was created by Musealia and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum for the UN and UNESCO. Since then it has travelled to other cities and institutions, and for the last five months it's been open in London. The longevity of this exhibition gives some indication to the impact it has on all those who see it.

Seeing Auschwitz is beautifully curated. It opens by asking visitors to really look at the series of images before them, and question them in a way they are unlikely to be used to. One of the most influential historical sources for documenting what happened at Auschwitz are photographs, perhaps most famously used in the Nuremberg trials, but also as the exhibition points out by many since then including historians, documentary and film makers. The vast majority of these photographs are taken by the perpetrators, German soldiers - a fact which is often overlooked. And yet, as should always be the case when approaching historical images, these photographs are not neutral images: they are not objective and they deserve to be treated with scrutiny.

Never before had I questioned, why are there even photographs of Auschwitz at all? Why do we recognise the sight of confused, frightened Jews standing beside huge trains, with the ominous brick arch looming in the background? Why would someone choose to take a photograph of it and what were they seeing as they took in the scene?

The answers unfold as you follow the line around the exhibition rooms. Seeing Auschwitz pairs multiple visual sources of life in the camp, most striking is the contrast between the two Nazi-made photo albums, The Resettlement of Hungarian Jews (also known as the Auschwitz Album) and the Höcker album (private photographs believe to have been taken by the officer Karl-Friedrich Höcker) with the few photographs and many sketches produced by Jewish prisoners, to present alternative versions of history, side by side. Crucially these additional photographs and paper sketches tell the stories of the victims and the survivors, restoring humanity to numbers and statistics. They include photographs and drawings defiantly captured by Jewish prisoners, as well as the personal photographs that individuals arrived at Auschwitz with, capturing their "life before" and a world that would be no longer. Other photographic sources include the "mugshot" photos of prisoners and aerial shots of the camps captured by Allied spy planes looking for bomb targets. That the Allied forces were aware of the camps activities but did not intervene, choosing to prioritise ending the war rather than preventing, or at the very least disrupting, genocide I found particularly troubling.

Arguably for the first time, the lives and stories of the victims and survivors of Auschwitz are put front and centre, and not simply the version the Nazis wished to tell. Surviving Auschwitz was not just about making it out the gates alive, it was about recording the reality of the camp - even if that act cost them their life. It was imperative the world knew what had happened and never forgot it. As you can imagine, the images and the stories alongside these are images are harrowing and inspiring in equal measure. I was reminded today of the worst of humanity but also of the remarkable bravery and resilience that arises in the darkest of moments.

Yet this is an exhibition that is not simply there to educate, nor is it to ensure that the story of Auschwitz is not forgotten. It is also there to spotlight the genocides that have happened in every decade since WW2 - in Cambodia, Rwanda, Iraq, Myanmar.. the list goes on. In every decade - just let that sink in.

Seeing Auschwitz ends with a plea to it's audience to really see what's before them: "If we remain blind to such unfolding atrocities, if the international community does not become more effective in preventing genocide, can we really say that we have 'seen' Auschwitz at all?"

The exhibition is characterised by haunting music, the only sound bar the moving of feet. Viewers stood transfixed, listening to their audio guide and staring at the images before them. It is an atmosphere I struggle to describe, there was a peaceful respect to the behaviour and a sense of community - we were all experiencing this together. To end the exhibition, every visitor stood and with patient determination watched the footage from each country of more recent genocides. And then I, as did everyone else, walked out into the world, to a busy, noisy street that seemed worlds apart from what I had just witnessed.