him to help with the adoption in 1951 of a convention preventing the crimes of genocide.” She explained that young people often feel that there is nothing they can do about crimes happening in the world, but they could turn to the great example of Rafał Lemkin who, alone, made things change.
Then, she mentioned an actual threat to activism: slacktivism. It cannot be compared to activism; in fact, it conceals danger. “The war in Syria is waged before our very eyes, we see the photographs, we see the images and the question arises about what we can do. What we have now is slacktivism, a passive social and political activism. This is the greatest threat and risk to activism. […] I click on “Like” and I feel justified, I have done something, I feel better, I feel smug because I have done something. However, there is nothing behind that.”
Among all the visitors and the reasons why people come to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial site, Dr. Alicja Bartuś indicated that the most interesting ones are young people who are here to extend their knowledge. She raised the following questions to try to understand what they are looking for by coming to this authentic memorial site: “What type of knowledge are they looking for? Is it knowledge about the past, about the present or maybe about the future? Or is it knowledge for the future? Another question that we ask ourselves quite often is whether a tour of the Auschwitz memorial site changes anything in the consciousness and the awareness of young people. How does their awareness change? We are thinking about how people’s awareness changes after they visit Auschwitz. The most important element is visiting the place, being physically in Auschwitz, the physical contact.” By raising all these questions, her point was to explain that the most important element is to feel the place. Being there makes the difference; the knowledge acquired before visiting only makes complete sense after visiting the place, it makes people sensitive. “Extermination is no longer an abstract notion in such a place. […] This is something you can never get a sense of when you read a book or watch TV. You have to visit a memorial site. A visit to the memorial site results in an extended knowledge as well as something especially important which is making people, making young people, sensitive, making them eager to act. It should all be based on the foundation of the memory of the past.”
Resulting from her lectures using the method of comparative genocide, she says that “the notion of genocide is blurred, young people don’t really understand what genocide means. […] This is something that we find and we believe to be obvious, but it is not always the case, comparing things, finding the common denominators and differences in genocide.” She added that it is possible “to compare various crimes, but you cannot put an equation mark between them.” She gave various examples of common mechanisms of crimes and genocides, such as starting with words and labels, stripping people of their names, giving them numbers, the dehumanization of certain groups etc. When she discusses these mechanisms with her students, she also addresses the question of the present
day and what can be done on an everyday basis to prevent hatred, crimes and genocides. She showed one of the most shocking examples she had: a photograph taken when there was a great wave of hatred against emigrants in Poland. Online, on this picture, young people were commenting and publishing posts making references to concentration camps such as: “Demand for soap will grow, it is high time we actually made use of them, let’s invite them”, “If you need a Kapo I will willingly volunteer”, “There are still places available in the Majdanek Camp”. These shocking posts of school students show what little sensitivity they have. For Dr. Alicja Bartuś, the entire problem lies in sensitivity. “We stand up for things that happen in Europe and we don’t really care at all about what is happening outside of Europe. We talked here about the selective sensitivity that we have. It seems that we close our eyes, we are indifferent to the victims of any wars that are not our wars. […] If you adopt a global perspective, you have to be aware of the fact that these crimes are not a thing of the past. We have the knowledge and we know that similar things are happening: the question is whether we care. If you want to look globally, you have to be vigilant, we all need to stay active, you need to take action as soon as something happens - as soon as you see graffiti on the walls, as soon as the first hatred marches are organized, when you see a poster saying “Europe is for the whites”.