About the History
of post-camp sites
and the future of martydom museums
Wiesław Wysok, State Museum at Majdanek
The event was the focal point of the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the institution - the oldest martyrdom museum in Europe, located on the grounds of the former German concentration camp. The conference was addressed not only to museum employees but also to academic researchers and representatives of various scientific disciplines.
The ideological assumptions of the conference emphasised that the material and ontological aspects of martyrdom museums situated in historical sites on the grounds of World War II camps are a combination of three distinct and mutually overlapping entities, namely. "The camp - site - museum". The conceptual triad used in the conference title seems to be crucial for the debate on the specificity of martyrdom museums, their narratives, effect and perception, in other words, how the past is presented in such institutions.
The "Camp" is, above all, the history of crime, fates of prisoners, their persecution and extermination. It is also the material remains of buildings and better or worse preserved historical traces. The relics, which are fragments of camps, also belong to a place, that is, a “post-camp site" that has its own history, and which is today a cultural palimpsest with several layers of memory. As the example of the Museum at Majdanek, which has a large number of historical buildings, shows, it may seem that the camp and the site are one and the same. It is however different, as illustrated by the memorial site in Sobibór, where the camp buildings did not survive (they were destroyed or demolished), but still remains the site of the former German death camp, i.e. the site of the aftermath, first transformed by the perpetrators of genocide, then by nature and various post-war activities (construction of a monument) or lack thereof. Furthermore, there is the "museum" form, which in addition to its role as a medium in the triad, also serves as an institutional superstructure. Often, only a part of the camp and the site are components of the camp, which are more or less subject to musealisation processes.
On October 7-9, 2019, a nationwide scientific conference titled "History in Memorial Spaces . The Camp - site - museum", was held in Lublin. It was organised
by the State Museum at Majdanek. .
All pictures in the article: State Museum at Majdanek