the memory of the Shoah in certain places in Poland of which Sobibor is a part , but I think that it is more interesting to confront it with the possibility of perceiving the nuance , imagination and complexity of the points of view at work .
In fine , and this is my point of view and the one expressed in the film , Sobibor cannot be reduced to any of these disputes or to any of these people individually . No memorialisation effort can be truly satisfactory despite everyone ’ s good intentions because any synthesis , even if that were possible , would likely euphemise the place and freeze its use in a set of norms that make any imaginary world difficult .
By answering your question about the main characters at work around Sobibor , I touched on a fundamental issue regarding sites of the genocide in Poland : one of material memory through the discovery and fate of objects belonging to the victims . This is a question with a historicity almost contemporary with the Shoah and reemerges today with the disappearance of its witnesses . It produces problems related to the ownership , conservation and exhibition of these objects . What is your perception , both as a historian and filmmaker , of an issue that is at the heart of your work ?
Ania Szczepanska : The material traces of the Shoah are in fact part of a long history . Remember that in the immediate post-war period , objects were used as evidence in trials , where they were presented sealed or represented in photographs . The question of reparations , in which the material question was central , only took shape much later , as part of financial compensation policies put in place in the 1990s . For example in France , the Mattéoli mission recommended the establishment of the Commission for the Compensation of Victims of Spoliations ( CIVS ) by decree in 1999 , which defines the damage resulting from the spoliations of material and financial property giving right to compensation or restitution .
In my research , the question of objects from the Shoah was posed differently . The starting point was a study seminar organised in Paris in 2010 by Annette
Wieviorka and Piotr Cywinski on “ the future of Auschwitz ”. It dealt with exploring the future of the site from an ethical but also a material perspective . As the historian notes in the introduction to the seminar : “ The idea of bearing witness (...) has been transferred from men to material traces in the illusion that they escape from time . However , to use the title of a novel by Vassili Grossman , Tout passe (“ Everything flows ”), even if the rhythm of the passing of time is not the same for men , material constructions or trees ”. During this seminar , which marked me intellectually and emotionally , I was able to discover the short documentary film Archeologia , created by Polish filmmaker Andrzej Brzozowski in 1967 and somewhat forgotten since . The film showed archaeological excavations carried out by archaeologists from Warsaw near Krematorium III . Research led me to the Lodz Film Studio ( WFO ), where I discovered that the filmmaker initiated these digs in the film ’ s production file . The incredible story of these 16,000 unearthed objects , whose detailed lists I discovered , fascinated me and I wanted to follow their thread .
A few years later , in 2016 , it was by rewatching Brzozowski ’ s film that the curators of the Auschwitz Museum were able to recover these thousands of objects from the Archaeology Institute in Warsaw before studying them , inventorying them , restoring them if necessary and adding them to their collections . These thousands of objects made a very significant contribution to the museum , accounting for 10 % of the collections . It was also a scientific challenge for the conservation laboratory . Certain materials such as plastic store very poorly , especially when the object in question spent 20 years underground , followed by decades in cardboard boxes and in unusual conditions . Can and should we keep everything ? What life stories can these objects support ? As Marcel Cohen puts it in his book Sur la scène intérieure , when he questions the 60-year conservation of an egg cup , a “ modest ” and “ faded ” object , a familiar object if ever there was one : “ Is it abusive to see the very quality of this memory , its texture , something as uncertain as the reflection of an aura ?”
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Deep view