The Memorial Battles for ‘Planet Auschwitz’, 1945–2025

To mark the 80^th anniversary of the Allied liberation of Europe, this talk by Danny Kowalsky explores the successive postwar struggles to create and maintain a museum at the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex – the most murderous of all Nazi-German sites of incarceration, forced labour and extermination. In the vast concentration camp archipelago that ranged across occupied Europe, Auschwitz was unique. It was multi-purpose, geographically expansive and the site of both Jewish and Gentile suffering. At the 1961 Eichmann Trial in Jerusalem, one of the survivors, Yehiel Dinur, sought to explain how far the camp represented a rupture in civilization. He called it ‘Planet Auschwitz’.  Across eight decades, the camp’s museum has continually reinvented itself, often conforming to – but sometimes opposing – the reigning Zeitgeist. This talk will conclude by discussing the most recent commemoration – further evidence of the perennially contentious memorial battles for ‘Planet Auschwitz’.