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Commemorating the Children of World War II in Poland pp 103–123Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Morbid Pleasure: Children in Death Camps

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Abstract

This chapter discusses contemporary remembrance of child victims at the museums established on the site of former death camps, with a particular focus on Majdanek. I explore here both the exhibitions devoted to the young victims of the atrocity and the educational activities that are aimed at schoolchildren. By focusing on the idea of morbid pleasure, this chapter discusses how the commemoration of Polish, Jewish, Roma, Ukrainian and Belarusian children through both exhibitions and extra-curricular activities not only promotes the ideas of tolerance and diversity among the contemporary youth but also develops “dark curiosity” in genocide. As I argue in this chapter, the inferred vulnerability of the child and the interactive dimension of the majority of these projects strengthen an affective relationship between those being commemorated and those who commemorate, whilst leaving contemporary schoolchildren in awe of the scale of suffering experienced by their World War II counterparts

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Chris Rojek, Ways of Escape: Modern Transformations in Leisure and Travel (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993), 136.

  2. 2.

    A.V. Seaton, “Guided by the Dark: From Thanatopsis to Thanatourism ,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 2 (1996): 234–244; Thomas Blom, “Morbid Tourism : A Postmodern Market Niche with an Example from Althorp,” Norwegian Journal of Geography 54 (2000): 29–36; Sean O’Neill, “Soham Pleads with Trippers to Stay Away,” The Telegraph (26 August 2002), http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1405391/Soham-pleads-with-trippers-to-stay-away.html [accessed 17 March 2017].

  3. 3.

    Malcolm Foley and John Lennon, “JFK and Dark Tourism: A Fascination with Assassination,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 2 (1996): 198.

  4. 4.

    See, for example, Philip Stone and Richard Sharpley, “Consuming Dark Tourism: A Thanatological Perspective”, Annals of Tourism Research 35/2 (2008): 575.

  5. 5.

    Philip Stone, “A Dark Tourism Spectrum: Towards a Typology of Death and Macabre Related Tourist Sites, Attractions and Exhibitions”, Tourism 52/2 (2006): 152.

  6. 6.

    Dorina Maria Buda proposes a much broader term of “affective tourism” to describe experiences of travelling to countries in turmoil, such as Iraq and Israel/Palestine. She argues that “Engaging in affective tourism provides opportunities for psychoanalytic drives, especially the death drive, to be accessed in places of ongoing socio-political turmoil.” See Dorina Maria Buda, Affective Tourism: Dark Routes in Conflict (London: Routledge, 2015), 3.

  7. 7.

    See, for example, the case of the American teen who photographed herself at Auschwitz and later defended her actions, claiming the image was a tribute to her father who taught her about concentration camps. See Jessica Durando, “Auschwitz Selfie Girl Breanna Mitchell Defends Her Controversial Picture”, Huffington Post (24 July 2014), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/24/auschwitz-selfie-girl-breanna-mitchell_n_5618225.html [accessed 3 August 2017].

  8. 8.

    The most critical reaction to ways in which the Berlin memorial has been used a site for candid photographs is the project by Berlin-based Israeli artist Shahak Shapira who used selfies taken by tourists visiting the memorial and superimposed their figures on photographs from death camps.

  9. 9.

    Theodor W. Adorno, “Education After Auschwitz ”, in Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 191.

  10. 10.

    Ibid., 192–193.

  11. 11.

    See Norbert H. Weber and Hans-Fred Rathenow, “Pedagogika miejsc pamięci – próba bilansu”, Kwartalnik Pedagogiczny 2 (1996): 3–36.

  12. 12.

    See Tomasz Kranz, “Edukacja w muzeach upamiętniających ofiary nazizmu”, Przeszłość i pamięć 4 (2000): 101.

  13. 13.

    See Wiesław Wysok, “Edukacja w muzeach upamiętniania in situ. Postulaty, możliwości i granice oddziałwania dydaktycznego”, in Wiesław Wysok and Andrzej Stępnik (eds.), Edukacja muzealna w Polsce. Aspekty, konteksty, ujęcia (Lublin: Państwowe Muzeum na Majdanku, 2013), 39–68.

  14. 14.

    See, for example, an interesting account of two visits to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1989 and 2003. Lawrence Blum, “The Poles, the Jews and the Holocaust: Reflections on an AME Trip to Auschwitz”, Journal of Moral Education 33/2 (2004): 131–148.

  15. 15.

    See, for example, a discussion on the role of educational visits to Auschwitz in the Scottish national curriculum: Paula Cowan and Henry Maitles, “We Saw Inhumanity Close Up: What Is Gained by School Students from Scotland Visiting Auschwitz?” Journal of Curriculum Studies 43/2 (2011): 163–184.

  16. 16.

    For a longer discussion of the Museum’s educational activities, see Marcin Zaborski, Współczesne pomniki i miejsca pamięci w polskiej i niemieckiej kulturze politycznej (Toruń: Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek, 2011), 239–247.

  17. 17.

    See Tomasz Kranz, “Ewidencja zgonów i śmiertelność więźniów KL Lublin”, Zeszyty Majdanka XXIII (2005): 29–33.

  18. 18.

    Ibid., 33.

  19. 19.

    Józef Marszałek, Majdanek. The Concentration Camp in Lublin (Warsaw: Interpress, 1986), 71–73.

  20. 20.

    Ibid., 72.

  21. 21.

    See Barbara Schwindt, “Dzieci żydowskie w obozie koncentracyjnym na Majdanku w 1943 r.”, Zeszyty Majdanka XXII (2003): 57–76. For a broader discussion of the extermination of Jewish population at Majdanek, see, for example, Tomasz Kranz, “Eksterminacja Żydów na Majdanku i rola obozu w realizacji ‘Akcji Reinhardt’”, Zeszyty Majdanka XXII (2003): 7–55.

  22. 22.

    Kranz, “Ewidencja zgonów i śmiertelność więźniów KL Lublin”, 7–54.

  23. 23.

    Ibid., 15.

  24. 24.

    See, for example, the memoir of Halina Birenbaum who was thirteen at the time of her arrival at Majdanek and who later was imprisoned in other notorious sites of extermination such as KL Auschwitz. Hers is the only memoir written by a former Polish-Jewish child prisoner at the camp: Halina Birenbaum, Nadzieja umiera ostatnia. Wyprawa w przeszłość (Oświęcim: Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau, 2012). See also a brief account of Piotr Kiriszczenko, a Belarusian boy who survived the camp: Piotr Kiriszczenko, “Transporty z Białorusi”, in Czesław Rajca and Anna Wiśniewiska (eds.), Przeżyli Majdanek. Wspomnienia byłych więźniów obozu koncentracyjnego na Majdanku (Lublin: Państwowe Muzeum na Majdanku, 1980), 194–200. See also shorter accounts by Polish female prisoners, for example, Helena Kurcyusz who made portraits of some of the Belarusian children and smuggled three of them out of the camp: Helena Kurcyusz, “Dziecięce komando”, in Krystyna Tarasiewicz (ed.), My z Majdanka. Wspomnienia byłych więźniarek (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Lubelskie, 1988), 43–64.

  25. 25.

    See, for example, Mary Fulbrook and Ulinka Rublack, “In Relation: The ‘Social Self’ and Ego-Documents”, German History 28/3 (2010): 263–272. See also Susan A. Crane, “Writing the Individual Back into Collective Memory”, American Historical Review 102/5 (1997): 1372–1385.

  26. 26.

    Andrzej Molik, “Peregrynacje. Na drugiej szali kultury”, Kurier Lubelski (25 June 2002).

  27. 27.

    Grzegorz Józefczuk, “Utracone dzieciństwo”, Gazeta Wyborcza Lublin (7 January 2003).

  28. 28.

    Marta Grudzińska, “Życie dzieci na Majdanku”, Mówią wieki 5/11 (2003): 1.

  29. 29.

    As Józef Marszałek put it: “An exceptionally large number of prisoners were employed in tailor’s workshops, 270 persons on the average. Initially only men worked there but from 1943 also women, who soon became a majority. The sewing room repaired chiefly pillaged clothes, as well as prisoners’ linen and stripped clothes. A group of women knitted earlaps, socks, and gloves for the German army. A gang of men sewed and repaired uniforms for SS-men.” See Marszałek, Majdanek , 106.

  30. 30.

    For a longer discussion on the role of play in the distorted reality of ghettos and concentration camps, see Eisen, Children and Play in the Holocaust, 84.

  31. 31.

    Tomasz Pietrasiewicz, Marta Grudzińska, Elementarz. Dzieci w obozie na Majdanku, 4, http://biblioteka.teatrnn.pl/dlibra/dlibra/docmetadata?id=19450&from=&dirids=1&ver_id=&lp=20&QI= [accessed 10 November 2016].

  32. 32.

    See Marszałek, Majdanek, 85.

  33. 33.

    Bożena Shallcross, The Holocaust Object in Polish and Polish-Jewish Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 1.

  34. 34.

    Tadeusz Różewicz, “Pigtail”, in Adam Czerniawski (trans.), They Came to See a Poet (London: Anvil Press Poetry, 2004), 48.

  35. 35.

    The public commemorations connected to Henio Żytomirski have not been limited to the “Elementarz” exhibition at Majdanek. Other projects, launched in 2005 by Grodzka Gate Centre, have included Listy do Henia (Letters to Henio), an annual project aimed at local schoolchildren. The project invites the children to write letters to the boy and post them in a specially designed letter box in the centre of Lublin. Other initiatives have included a short comic book called Spacer (The Walk) (2012) and a creation of an interactive Facebook page, written in first person. I devote more attention to this in Ewa Stańczyk, “Transnational, Transborder, Antinational? The Memory of Jewish Past in Poland”, Nationalities Papers 44/3 (2016): 419–421.

  36. 36.

    Quoted in Marta Grudzińska, “Elementarz z Majdanka”, Zeszyty Szkolne 4/10 (2003): 111.

  37. 37.

    Ibid.

  38. 38.

    Magdalena Korżyńska, “***”, in Pietrasiewicz and Grudzińska, Elementarz. Dzieci w obozie na Majdanku, 12.

  39. 39.

    Marcin Garbowski, “Lekcja z elementarza”, in ibid.

  40. 40.

    Kamil Pyszniak, “***”, in ibid.

  41. 41.

    See Elżbieta Szabelska, “Droga Elżuniu!”, in ibid.

  42. 42.

    See Paweł Zdybel, “***”, in ibid.

  43. 43.

    For an excellent collection of essays, providing reflections of educators and other practitioners who teach on the Holocaust, see Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs and Leszek Hońdo (eds.), Why Should We Teach About the Holocaust? (Kraków: Judaica Foundation, Center for Jewish Culture, 2004). For a selection of educational materials see Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs, Krystyna Oleksy, and Piotr Trojański, Jak uczyć o Auschwitz i Holokauście: materiały dydaktyczne dla nauczycieli (Oświęcim: Międzynarodowe Centrum Edukacji o Auschwitz i Holokauście, 2007).

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    Ewa Stańczyk

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Stańczyk, E. (2019). Morbid Pleasure: Children in Death Camps. In: Commemorating the Children of World War II in Poland. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32262-5_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32262-5_5

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