Cash crisis threat to Auschwitz (BBC)
That’s worrying. I’m amazed that a site of such historical importance could ever find itself in such a precarious financial position… it’s on the UNESCO list of world heritage sites, and Poland is now in the EU, so how can there possibly be a lack of funding? The mind boggles.
Not surprisingly, I’m on the side of Wladyslaw Bartoszewski in this BBC debate. Auschwitz stands as a reminder of all examples of genocide, brutality and prejudice, not just the WW2 Holocaust.
There’s a quiet, unassuming dignity about the bleak Flanders fields which saw such destruction before returning to farmland, but military cemeteries such as Tyne Cot provide the hard, factual evidence. In the same way, the Auschwitz/Birkenau museum provides a necessarily brutal account of what actually happened, to guard against romanticisation, dilution or (even worse) denial.