• by Christian Papesch (oswiecim, poland)
• Monday, February 20, 2012
• Inter Press Service

Igor Malitski, an 87-year-old professor of mechanical engineering from Ukraine, stands in the snow underneath a metal gate. He is wearing a thick winter jacket and big plastic headphones. A blue and white cap covers his head.

Malitski's face is blank. His cap is old and stained with blood. Big iron letters above his head form the arch of the gate. Three words, perhaps the most horrific euphemism in human history: Arbeit Macht Frei. Work frees.

It is the gate to the World War Two concentration camp Auschwitz.

'My number: 188 005,' says Malitski in almost perfect German, rolling up his left sleeve. The six numbers on the white skin of his forearm are a little fuzzy, but its blue colour is still strong. It is a visible reminder of Malitski's time in Auschwitz — and it is as permanent as his memories of this place.

'When they tattooed me with a needle, I felt like they had made a piece of meat out of me,' he said a dark, clear voice. 'That was my worst experience, right at the beginning.'

Most of the people who were brought to Auschwitz never got such a tattoo. More than 80 percent of the approximately 1.1 million people who died in the biggest extermination camp — which actually consisted of a network of three different camps — were brought straight into the gas chambers or shot on arrival.

Nine hundred thousand victims were Jews, others were Sinti and Romanies, political prisoners, Jehovah's witnesses, gay or disabled people. On Jan. 27, 1945, the Red Army of the Soviet Union liberated the camp and freed about 7,500 people.

After the war, Auschwitz became a symbol and a metaphor of the Holocaust, of the planned and industrialised murder of members of every ethnic, religious or social group that did not fit to the racist, social-Darwinist ideals of the Nazis.

About 1.3 million visitors from all over the world come to see the camp every year, which makes it the most visited museum of Poland.

'We are probably the only museum in the world that needs a defensive PR strategy,' Paweł Sawicki, a spokesman for the museum, told IPS. 'We get a lot of requests from artists, journalists or businessmen. And usually our job is to say no.'

The camp is one important factor for the commemoration of the Holocaust; the survivors are the other. Organisations like the German Maximilian Kolbe Werk support survivors of former ghettos and concentration camps and organise memorial events and international meetings — in schools, universities, and inside the camp itself.

'The personal contact between students and survivors is very important for us,' explained Wolfgang Gerstner, director of the non- governmental organisation. 'You cannot ask a personal question to a book. Nothing can replace the opportunity to meet them and talk to them. '

IPS correspondent Christian Papesch had this opportunity. Watch his IPS interviews Igor Malitski and other survivors about what they experienced in Auschwitz, why they came back to the camp, and what will happen to their stories once they are not able to tell them anymore.

© Inter Press Service (2012) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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