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‘Arbeit Macht Frei’: A Re-evaluation of Auschwitz as the Symbol of the Holocaust

Word Count: 4,381

Abstract:

Auschwitz was the biggest, most brutal and nihilistic exponent of the Nazi Holocaust project.

This is one the most fundamental truisms of modern European history, and of global

popular culture. Indeed, Auschwitz has become the symbol of the Holocaust, the physical

embodiment of the nature of the destruction of European Jewry. Despite the gargantuan

levels of research on the topic, this inaccurate and unhelpful truism has persisted and

continues to be promoted by many, perhaps most, historians in the field. It is certainly the

most prominent understanding amongst the wider public. This paper seeks to challenge and

repudiate this cultural and historical inaccuracy through careful yet rigorous analysis and

logical interpretation of empirical evidence. In broad terms, this study seeks to answer two

key questions: ‘Why has Auschwitz become the unchallenged symbol of the Holocaust in

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popular collective memory and amongst a considerable school of academic thought?’ and

‘Does Auschwitz merit such a title?’ This paper also hopes to answer a much wider and more

deeply penetrating question. ‘Can the Holocaust be represented adequately and accurately

through the prism of one physical place?’ The latter question allows this paper to present

the thesis that the Holocaust cannot be represented in such a manner, whilst the former

questions form the case study through which the thesis is pursued. The paper will be

characterised and informed by a diverse range of secondary literature; demonstrating the

Historiographical debate in this topic and offering credence to the arguments contained

within this work. The bulk of this study however is built upon an array of significant

historical primary documents sourced from across Europe, in English, German and Polish. All

subsequent translations are those of the author.

This study seeks to help develop and promote a more accurate, defensible and logical

understanding of the realities of the Holocaust; an understanding void of the mythologies

that currently plague academic and cultural interpretations of one of the most significant

events in human history.

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The degradation and extermination of the Jews of Europe is recalled as the pinnacle

of human intolerance and cruelty. The Holocaust is remembered amongst the global

collective memory as the greatest genocide in human history; the archetype for all others to

follow.1 The concentration camps at Auschwitz are represented, and promoted, as the ‘very

capital’ of the entire process.2 Indeed, Auschwitz has become a synonym for the Holocaust,

and all of its many complex facets, both within academia and amongst society more

generally. It has, in effect, monopolised Holocaust remembrance. It is on this issue that this

paper is concerned. Why has Auschwitz become the incontrovertible symbol of the

Holocaust? Does Auschwitz merit such a title? This research paper will seek to answer these

1 The Holocaust was certainly not the first human genocide, but is generally remembered as such in contemporary collective memory. (Add More Here) 2 P. Hayes, Auschwitz, Capital of the Holocaust in ‘Holocaust and Genocide Studies’, Autumn 2003, pp. 331.

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questions directly and repudiate the idea of Auschwitz as a suitable symbol. In doing so, this

paper also seeks to address the much broader issue of whether the Holocaust can be

adequately or accurately represented through the prism of one physical place, event or

memorial. The latter exploration affords this paper the opportunity to present the thesis

that the Holocaust cannot be represented in such a manner, whilst the former question will

provide the case study through which the thesis will be pursued. In pursuit of this end, this

paper will first explore the Historiography and the significance of the event in popular

culture, so as to establish that Auschwitz is indeed commonly held as the symbolic

manifestation of the Holocaust in its entirety. Following the establishment of this truth, this

paper will offer an explanation as to how and why Auschwitz has assumed such stature. The

latter half of the paper will then analyse and interrogate the legitimacy of Auschwitz

maintaining such historical and contemporary significance before finally addressing the

impossibility of any single entity ever adequately embodying the full trauma and nature of

the event.

Prominence of Auschwitz in Popular and Academic Opinion

It is irrefutable that Auschwitz has come to dominate the popular understanding of

the Holocaust. In an era when information is disseminated and imbibed through sound

bites, snapshots and powerful imagery, it is very significant that Holocaust iconography has

become inextricably linked to the iconography of Auschwitz. Concentration camps, gas

chambers, incineration and Deutsche Reichsbahn trains packed with Jews are all images

evoked from the popular understanding of the Holocaust. These are all images educed from

an understanding of Auschwitz. The infamous Nazi dictum Arbeit Macht Frei is another

prime example of the dominance of Auschwitz imagery on the popular memory of the

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Holocaust.3 In popular culture too, Auschwitz has been prominent in representations of the

entire event. In cinema, Auschwitz has been a primary setting, one could almost say

character, for some of the most critically acclaimed and popularly received Holocaust films.

Roberto Benigni’s classic La Vita è Bella is a case in point. The Italian film is one of the most

widely viewed and critically acclaimed Holocaust films created having won three Oscars, a

BAFTA and the Grand Prize of the Jury at the Cannes Film Festival.4 Auschwitz also plays a

leading role in the most popular Holocaust literature. The most widely disseminated

Holocaust memoir, Primo Levi’s If this is a Man, focuses on the writer’s experiences in

Auschwitz as does Tadeusz Borowski’s melancholic memoir This Way to the Gas, Ladies and

Gentlemen. Similarly, the use of gas chambers and smoking chimneys in Art Spiegelman’s

graphic novel Maus is further evidence of the emotive nature of these particular images in

the public recognition of the Holocaust.5 A further indication of the prominence of

Auschwitz can be seen in the phenomenon of what John Lennon and Malcolm Foley have

described as “dark tourism”; tourism that involves tourists travelling to sites associated with

death.6 As of 2011, 30 million tourists had visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum,

situated on the territory of the infamous concentration camp.7 It almost goes without saying

that no other concentration camp can match this number. Indeed, most do not even have

museums, as Auschwitz does, to entice tourists.

The dominance of Auschwitz in popular conceptions of the Holocaust is replicated

amongst a considerable school of thought within academia. For some independent

3 Paradoxically, despite being synonymous with the camp, the Arbeit Macht Frei sign did not originate from, or belong exclusively to, Auschwitz. The dictum was first introduced at Dachau Concentration Camp before later being adopted by Rudolf Höss at Auschwitz. 4 Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com). 5 A. Spiegelman, The Complete Maus (New York, 1992), pp. 189 -199. 6 J. Lennon, M. Foley, Dark Tourism: The Attraction of Death and Disaster (London, 2006), p. 41. 7 A. Białecka, European Pack for Visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum (Strasbourg, 2010), p. 18.

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historians, ‘Auschwitz, through its destructive dynamism, was the physical embodiment of

the fundamental values of the Nazi state.’8 R.S. Botwinick similarly argues that, ‘the

demented world of Auschwitz gave full expression to the worst betrayal of humanity found

in the annals of history,’ and that Auschwitz is ‘rightly placed at the centre of the genocide

of European Jewry.’9 Indeed, in the majority of mentionable Holocaust academic literature,

this position is in vogue. Perhaps more significantly, this school of thought is also present

amongst historians with a direct affiliation to prominent Holocaust museums, memorials

and government institutions – all of which are crucial in shaping how the Holocaust is

remembered. Yisrael Gutman, an Auschwitz survivor, is a prime example. He is chairman of

the Scientific Council at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Israel, an advisor to the

Polish government on issues of Holocaust commemoration and representation, and has

published books in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. It is his

view, and by association that of the organisations he represents and publishes for, that

‘Auschwitz illumines the totality of the Nazi killing machine.’10 This demonstrates that the

pre-eminence of Auschwitz has been promoted through a process both of

institutionalisation at the prominent centres of memory, representation and education, and

through a wide exposure of this particular site in popular culture and conceptions of the

Holocaust.

The Roots of Auschwitz’s Pre-Eminence

Raul Hilberg states that the pre-eminence of Auschwitz is rooted in three of it’s

primary characteristics; (i) Death toll, (ii) the geography, and (iii) the permanent nature of

8 L. Rees, Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution (London, 2005), p. 8. 9 R.S. Botwinick, A History of the Holocaust: From Ideology to Annihilation (London, 1996), p. 197. 10 Y. Gutman, Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp (Washington D.C., 1994), p. vii.

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Auschwitz as a camp.11 It is certainly true that these three factors go a long way in

explaining the prominence of Auschwitz, however, Hilberg fails to acknowledge other crucial

factors: namely, (iv) the sheer scale of the Auschwitz operation, (v) the use of gas and

crematoria, and finally (vi) the large number of Auschwitz survivors. This paper will

interrogate all six factors rather than Hilberg’s reductionist three.

In physical terms, Auschwitz was astounding. The camp was originally built as a small

transit camp in former Polish military barracks situated in the small town of Oświęcim in

Upper Silesia, German-occupied Poland. Under the command of Rudolf Höss, it evolved into

the infamous death factory; both a forced labour and extermination camp. It comprised

more than forty-five sub camps and encompassed an area of approximately forty square

kilometres as illustrated in Figure 1.12 This area was one of ‘Auschwitz influence’ rather than

direct control but the magnitude of affected territory is staggering nonetheless. The

enormous dimensions of Auschwitz allowed it to accommodate the largest number of

prisoners, utilise the greatest amount of slave labourers and produce the most significant

economic output. Ultimately the grand scale of Auschwitz also enabled the camp to destroy

more lives than was possible at any other site.

11 R. Hilberg in Ibid., p. 81. 12 S. Krakowski in Y. Gutman, Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, p. 51.

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Figure 1 Auschwitz Sub camp System.

Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Online Archive (http://www.ushmm.org).

It has often perplexed historians, though, that the Nazis built Auschwitz in a manner

reflective of a permanent structure as this contributed to the Nazis’ failure to destroy the

camp before the Soviet liberation on 27 January 1945. This was dissimilar to other such

camps which were designed and served as temporary structures. The corollary was that

these camps were much more easily liquidated whilst Auschwitz remained partially intact at

the end of the war.13 Other Nazi extermination camps such as those at Sobibor, Treblinka or

Chelmno were almost wholly dissolved, meaning that early knowledge of these camps was

very limited. It has also meant their historical legacy has been diminished. The failure to

liquidate the camp has thus proved critical in establishing Auschwitz as the centre of

Holocaust education and symbolism. In simple terms, Auschwitz was the only tangible link

that remained of the Holocaust machinery. As noted, the camp still stands today as a

“living” memorial museum to the history of the Holocaust. It was almost inevitable then that 13 J. Caplan, N. Wachsmann, Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany: The New Histories, (London, 2010), p. 88.

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Auschwitz would become the centre of all historical study on the subject as many of the

available sources came from this camp; the most significant source being the very existence

of Auschwitz after the event at all.

Whilst thousands of Jews, and other minority groups, were used as slave labour,

often until death, at the Monowitz camp (Auschwitz III) or at the various sub-camps, the

centre of the Auschwitz extermination program was Auschwitz-Birkenau (Auschwitz II). The

strategies pursued here have also played a key role in promoting Auschwitz as the symbol of

the Holocaust - specifically, the gas chambers and crematoria. Ninety per cent of all those

who died at Auschwitz did so here as the Nazis gathered together their victims into crowded

shower-rooms where they released Zyklon-B, a deadly acidic gas, into the chamber.14 Rudolf

Höss intimated in his memoirs that this method of extermination was preferred as it was

bloodless and less traumatic for the Schutzstaffel (S.S.) guards in attendance.15 Death by gas

was not a trend only found at Auschwitz, similar deaths occurred at Treblinka, Sobibor or

Chelmno, however, the industrialisation and sheer numbers of victims made Auschwitz

stand alone in this respect. ‘Auschwitz-Birkenau could kill twelve thousand prisoners a day...

[and] could accommodate two thousand victims at one time and kill them in fifteen minutes

or less.’16 It was a very efficient and effective process. The outcome was a staggering death

toll achieved with relative ease.

One of the most hotly debated topics amongst academics is the exact number of

victims at Auschwitz. Early estimations ran from 4 million to as little as 100,000 confirmed

deaths. The Polish Supreme National Tribunal, 1946-48, demonstrated the disparity in

14 G.P. Megargee, The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933-1945, (Bloomington, 2009), p.209. 15 R. Hoss, Kommandant in Auschwitz (Munich, 1978), p. 126. [Authors Translation.] 16 R.S. Botwinick, A History of the Holocaust, p. 192.

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estimations by convicting Rudolf Höss of participation in the murder of 300,000 registered

prisoners and an ‘indeterminate number’ of unregistered prisoners certainly no less than 2.5

million.17 During his testimony at the Nuremburg Trial of Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Rudolf Höss

himself estimated the number around 3 million.18 It is difficult to collect accurate figures

due to, amongst other considerations, the lack of complete documents and the failure of

the Nazi authorities to properly register the majority of prisoners. More recent studies of

the number of victims have focused on the analysis of transport records and figures

alongside the registration documentation. In all, recent research estimates that Auschwitz

was responsible for approximately 1.1 – 1.3 million deaths.19 Of this total, ninety per cent

were Jewish.20 The death toll exacted at Auschwitz meant that almost twenty per cent of all

the victims of the Holocaust died in this single location. It is a death toll which dwarfs the

numbers of fatalities at any other individual site. In fact, had Auschwitz been the only

location involved in the Holocaust, it would still have been the second largest genocide in

human history after the Soviet Holodomor famine in the Ukraine in 1933 which saw more

than 2.4 million deaths, based on a conservative estimate.21 Though unquestionably a

numerical comparison is barbaric and inevitably leads to a hierarchy of victims, it is

nonetheless a useful, if crude, method for establishing the gargantuan scale of Auschwitz.

However, physical size and a huge death toll alone cannot explain why Auschwitz has come

to symbolise this terrible event; the nationality of the victims is also a key factor.

17 Wspoemnienia Rudolfa Hössa komendanta obozu oswiecimskiego (Historical Report of Auschwitz Camp Commander Rudolf Höss) (Warsaw, 1965), p. 27. [Authors Translation] 18 Der Nurnberger Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem Internationalen Militargerichtschof, Vol. 11 (Nuremburg, 1947), p. 458. [Authors Translation] 19 G.P. Megargee, USHMM Encyclopaedia, p. 204. 20D.L. Niewyk, The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust (New York, 2000), p.21. 21 T. Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (London, 2010), p. 53.

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Although there were approximately 426,000 prisoners from Hungary,22 victims of

Auschwitz were predominantly from Western European states such as France, Italy, Holland

and Germany.23 The reason for this is principally a chronological one. Despite the prominent

position Auschwitz would hold, it was not until 1943 and the closure of the Action Reinhardt

camps (Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka) that Auschwitz became the extermination camp of

the Third Reich.24 Indeed, Auschwitz was not even functioning as an extermination camp

until 1942 until what Hayes has described as the third phase of the Auschwitz evolutionary

process.25 The corollary is that most of the Polish Jewish population (the largest in Europe)

had been exterminated at various other camps before 1943. The importance of nationality

becomes apparent when one considers the thousands of prisoners that survived Auschwitz.

Documents from the archives of the National Auschwitz Museum suggest that

approximately 7,000 survivors were found by the Red Army on 27 January 1945.26 In this

sense, Auschwitz is just as bespoke in the number of deaths it oversaw, as it was in the

number of victims who survived. The fact that most survivors were of Western-European

descent meant they could publish their memoirs and tell their stories. This was almost

impossible for any Holocaust survivors to do from Eastern-Europe as post-war writers were

hindered by censorship laws behind the Communist ‘Iron Curtain’. In Poland, for example,

censorship was undertaken by the Main Office of Control of the Press, Publications and

Public Performances (GUKPPiW) who required that writer’s adhered rigidly to the tenets of

Socialist Realism. Indeed, censorship during those early years was so rigorous that ‘even

22 Y. Gutman, Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, p. 89 23 Ibid., pp. 86-89. 24 J. Caplan, Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany, p. 154. 25 P. Hayes, Capital of the Holocaust, p. 331. Hayes described three distinct phases in the Auschwitz evolutionary process: (i) political pacification 1940, (ii) Exploitation of an enslaved labour force 1941, and (iii) Extermination 1942-1945. 26 Polish translation of Soviet report on arrival at Auschwitz. Archiwum Panstwowego Muzeum w Oswiecimiu, Dpr-Hd/6, p. 89. [Authors Translation.]

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wedding invitations, business cards and rubber stamps did not escape the office’s control.’27

The consequence was that the early history of the Holocaust was told almost exclusively

through the memoirs of Western-European Jews who had survived Auschwitz, such as

Primo Levi. Another important factor relating to nationality is proposed by Norman Davies.

He asserts that Western histories have been West-centric in their approach and focus.28 The

fact that the majority of Western-European Jews were imprisoned at Auschwitz is perhaps

one reason why this site became the key area of focus for Western historians.

Counterfactually speaking, had Auschwitz been a predominantly East-European experience,

it is dubious that it would have become such a symbol in Western European histories, and

cultures.

Auschwitz as an Unrepresentative Symbol

There is however growing opposition amongst historians against the idea of

Auschwitz as an adequate symbol of the Holocaust, to which this writer subscribes. A

prominent proponent of this idea is Timothy Snyder. He describes Auschwitz as ‘only the

beginning of knowledge, a hint of the true reckoning with the past still to come.’29 Indeed,

using Auschwitz as a representative symbol of the entire Holocaust has a significant number

of flaws. Firstly, the very fact that Auschwitz had such a comparatively large number of

survivors is entirely misrepresentative of an event that had a survival rate of just thirty-three

per cent for the entire European Jewish population.30 On the issue of survival, it is important

to note that the survival of the Auschwitz camp is another unrepresentative anomaly. On

this point, Snyder argues that, ‘the very reasons that we know something about Auschwitz

27 T. Goban-Klas, The Orchestration of the Media: The Politics of Mass Communist Poland and the Aftermath, (Oxford, 1994), p. 63. 28 N. Davies, Europe at War 1939-1945: No Easy Victory (London, 2006), pp. 1-9. 29 T. Snyder, Holocaust: The Ignored Reality in ‘The New York Review of Books’, 16 July 2009. 30 L. Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews (London, 1975), p. 403

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warp our understanding of the Holocaust.’31 In this case, Auschwitz is an exception and so

cannot be representative of the entire reality. Furthermore, it has been noted in this paper

that almost twenty per cent of Holocaust victims died at Auschwitz. This fact is irrefutable,

and for this reason, it is not irrational that Auschwitz has dominated the collective memory

of the event. The corollary, however, is that eighty per cent of victims did not perish at

Auschwitz. Indeed, fully 5 million Jews died at locations other than Auschwitz-Birkenau. This

evidence demonstrates that whilst the death toll at Auschwitz was staggering, it cannot be

considered the centre of the Holocaust, based on a numerical argument, as the very vast

majority of victims did not perish there. Thus, by placing Auschwitz as the pre-eminent

symbol of the Holocaust one risks neglecting the majority of victims. In an event that saw

the murder of fully one third of world Jewry,32 it is abhorrent to omit eighty per cent of that

murdered population.

Similarly, using Auschwitz as an icon also misrepresents the principal victims of the

Holocaust; Polish and Soviet Jews, so called Ostjuden. In all, approximately two thirds of

Holocaust victims were of Polish or Soviet descent, 2.9 million and 1 million victims

respectively.33 300,000 Polish Jews are estimated to have died at Auschwitz.34 That figure

represents just 10 per cent of the total Polish Jewry death toll. The corresponding Soviet

figure is almost negligible. That Auschwitz was primarily a camp for Western-European Jews

is a further example of Auschwitz being misrepresentative. The Holocaust was

predominantly an Eastern-European tragedy with a vast majority of victims coming from

east of Berlin. It is peculiar then, and unhelpful, that the symbol of the Holocaust, the camp

31 T. Snyder, The Ignored Reality. 32 R. Stackelberg, Hitler’s Germany, (London, 1999), p.215 33 T. Snyder, The Ignored Reality. 34 D. Czech, Kalendarz wydarzen Auschwitz w KL Auschwitz (Oswiecim-Brzezinka, 1992), p. 127. [Authors Translation.]

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described as the ‘capital of the Holocaust’,35 should overlook those who were at the very

centre of the tragedy. This is demonstrated in Figure 2.

Figure 2 Jewish Death Toll by Country Origin.

Source: R.S. Wistrich, Hitler and the Holocaust (London, 2001), p. viii.

Through an Auschwitz-centric approach one also dismisses other prominent

locations and camps which were equally ghastly, albeit on a smaller scale. The Nazis

developed camps throughout Europe reaching as far west as Sylt on the Channel Islands (a

slave labour camp) and Drancy, near Paris, (a transit camp) to the most easterly parts of

Europe such as Kaiserwald in Lithuania (a concentration camp), as shown in Figure 3. It is

true that the majority of camps throughout Europe were slave labour or transit camps,

however there were five sites which were responsible for the systematic death of prisoners;

35 P. Hayes, Auschwitz, Capital of the Holocaust, p. 331.

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Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, which were devoted entirely to extermination, and

Majdanek which, like Auschwitz, functioned as both an extermination camp and a camp for

slave labour. Troublingly, and as a direct result of the monopolisation of the Holocaust by

Auschwitz, many people will have never heard of these locations at which such terrible

atrocities occurred and this again only serves to rob these victims of the same respect with

which Auschwitz victims and survivors are adorned.

Figure 3 Major Nazi Camps Across Europe.

Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Online Archive (http://www.ushmm.org).

Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka were designed with the precise intention of murdering Jews in

what was called ‘Action Reinhardt’ which aimed to exterminate the Polish Jewish

population. At these camps, unlike at Auschwitz which had many thousands of survivors at

its end, ‘ninety nine per cent of victims were murdered within hours of their arrival.’36 At

these three camps in a swift campaign against Polish Jewry, approximately 1.5 - 2 million

36 J. Caplan, Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany, p. 152.

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Jews died and only about 150 prisoners survived.37 On this evidence, the mortality rate per

prisoner arrival was much higher in these camps, which were liquidated in 1943, than at

Auschwitz. F. Pingel has argued the opposite, stating that the ‘proportion of death amongst

Auschwitz prisoners was much higher than in other concentration camps.’38 The evidence

however demonstrates the extent of Pingel’s error. At the Reinhardt camps, the survival

rate was less than 0.01 per cent. The corresponding figure for Auschwitz was approximately

0.7 per cent.39 The intention of these camps was also more morbid than anything

considered at Auschwitz, which evolved into the infamous death factory rather than being

established as such. The Action Reinhardt camps were, from the outset, conceived of as

extermination camps serving little other purpose than this. The intention and outcome of

Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka demonstrates that these camps were much more potent

assassins than Auschwitz.

Additionally, the use of Auschwitz as a symbol leads one to associate victims of the

Holocaust as victims of concentration camps and gas-chambers. The popular conception of

the Holocaust is unquestionably tied up with gas chambers. This is not accurate. The

Holocaust was not solely concerned with the incarceration of Jews into concentration

camps, at least not in the early stages.40 Though historians have failed to provide a definitive

date, it is generally accepted that the Holocaust began with the introduction of the anti-

Semitic Nuremburg Laws in 1935. This act began the official state-sponsored isolation and

persecution of Jewish citizens by the German state and would ultimately lead, following a

37 Ibid., p. 153. 38 F. Pingel, Haftlinge unter S.S. Herrschaft (Hamburg, 1978), p. 230. [Authors Translation.] 39 These calculations are the author’s own and are calculated by dividing the total number of survivors by the estimated death toll for each camp. All figures used for this calculation can be found in this paper. 40 Draft letter from Reich Minister for the occupied Eastern territories to the Reich Commissar for the East in S. Hochstadt, Sources of the Holocaust (Basingstoke, 2004), pp. 116 – 117. This letter, drafted on 25 October 1941, demonstrates the conception of mass-gassings had not been discussed officially until 1941.

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process of evolution, to the consequent death and desolation of European Jewry. The

example of the Jews of Warsaw, which constituted the largest Jewish population in Europe

second only to New York in global terms,41 is perhaps the most explicit demonstration of the

Holocaust before the exterminationist policies were announced at the Wannsee Conference

in January 1942.42 The Warsaw Jews were first alienated, segregated and isolated from the

Catholic Polish majority in the city through a series of anti-Semitic decrees; most notably the

requirement to wear a Star of David armband and the forbiddance of Jews to walk on the

city’s footpaths.43 Following this legal persecution, the Nazis began a process of

ghettoisation. Jews were forced into ghettos throughout Europe, the largest of which were

in Poland. In Warsaw, the largest of Europe’s ghettos, almost 400,000 Jews were forced into an

area less than 3.5 square kilometres. ‘About 30 percent of Warsaw’s population was concentrated

into about 2.4 percent of the city’s territory.’44 Using Auschwitz as the symbol of the Holocaust

simply ignores these other crucial elements of the event. It is incomplete to overlook the process of

anti-Semitic persecution and ghettoisation.

Likewise, the Holocaust was not solely concerned with gas chambers and crematoria.

In fact, recent research has shown that ‘as many, if not more, Jews were killed by bullets as

by gas.’45 Indeed, according to recent research, less than half of the true number of deaths

of the Holocaust occurred inside Nazi camps.46 Whilst we can attempt to collect and analyse

death totals from gas chambers and concentration camps as noted and documented by the

Nazi regime, it is impossible to accurately gauge the number of Jews who perished in the 41 M. Berenbaum, The Yad Vashem Encyclopaedia of the Ghettos during the Holocaust, (New York, 2009), p. 902. 42 Wannsee Conference Minutes in J. Mendelsohn, The Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes. Vol. 11: ‘The Wannsee Protocol and a 1944 Report on Auschwitz by the Office of Strategic Services’ (New York, 1982), pp.18-32 43 Y. Gutman, The Jews of Warsaw 1939-1943 (Brighton, 1982), p. 29. 44 M. Berenbaum, Encyclopaedia of the Ghettos, p. 902. 45 T. Snyder, The Ignored Reality. 46 J. Caplan, Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany, p. 149.

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ghettos, through casual rifle fire, death marches or through orchestrated food shortages

which were typically undocumented and unsystematic. However, we can be sure that more

than half of European Jews perished by these methods and these victims should not be

disregarded in our remembrance of the Holocaust. For Snyder, ‘the Holocaust was in order:

Operation Reinhardt, Shoah by bullets, Auschwitz.’47

Conclusion

This paper has sought to answer the question: is Auschwitz an adequate

representative symbol of the Holocaust? It is unquestionably true that the site has become

such a symbol, but this paper has refuted the legitimacy of Auschwitz to maintain such a

role. Auschwitz operated on a scale not seen at any other single site throughout Europe. It

was responsible for a fifth of the entire death toll and consumed an area of 40 square

kilometres. It was capable, and guilty, of murder on an industrial scale. The awesome nature

of Auschwitz has not been debated in this paper. Such a debate would be groundless.

However, this paper has proven that Auschwitz is not a suitable symbol of the event in its

entirety. The principal flaw is one of full and complete representation. The difficulty is that

Auschwitz does not, and cannot, represent every aspect of the Holocaust as it was not a

uniform event. The Holocaust is much better described as generalised and localised. Berlin

provided minimal input other than vague aspirations on desired outcomes, rather than

proposals on how these targets could and should be met. The result was a lack of

consistency between camps and regions as S.S. commanders were afforded more and more

autonomy over the means by which results could be achieved. There was thus great

inconsistency between methods used at, and characteristics of, different sites.

47 T. Snyder, The Ignored Reality.

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The Holocaust, because of its lack of uniformity cannot be represented by any one

symbol or image. Just as Auschwitz fails to accurately represent the Holocaust, so too does

every other aspect of the historical event if used as an individual occurrence. For example, if

one uses Shoah by bullets as a symbol then one neglects the use of the various other means

of murder; if one assigns another camp as an icon then one ignores the most prominent and

largest camp in the Third Reich, if we remember ‘Action Reinhardt’ as a collective symbol

then firstly we ignore the differences between each of the constituent camps, and secondly

fail to recognise any victims other than those of Polish descent. The problem of accurate

representation remains no matter which symbol is chosen. It would be much wiser then,

and historically accurate, to remember the Holocaust not through a single symbol but rather

to consider the event in its entirety and to appreciate the very many complex and shocking

components as a complete picture. This however is equally difficult to achieve. In trying to

remember the Holocaust in its entirety, society risks becoming lost and desensitised due to

the difficulty of interpreting and valuing the required level of detailed information.

Difficulties aside, it is essential to stress the importance of remembering such an event

correctly and representing it accurately. Whilst Auschwitz is a powerful symbol which is

globally recognised, it is wrong to remember only this part of the Holocaust, or for this site

to dominate our understanding of the event. To remember only an element of the event, is

to understand none of it. And in failing to understand the Holocaust, one can easily forget

its lessons.

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Bibliography

Secondary Sources

1. M. Berenbaum, The Yad Vashem Encyclopaedia of the Ghettos during the Holocaust,

(New York, 2009).

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21

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22

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