Slideshow: Holocaust memorials as physical reminders of past crimes
All photos by Filip Warwick. Hear/read his accompanying audio report.
Click any thumbnail image to launch slideshow.
Ka-Tsetnik 135633, also known as Yehiel De-Nur, wrote his first book about his Auschwitz experience, Salamandra, in two and a half weeks while in a British army hospital in Italy in 1945. The book gives a graphic account of the camp. Book printed in Palestine in 1946. (Photo credit: Filip Warwick)
The Hall of Names at Yad Vashem. The main circular hall is a collection of “Pages of Testimony,” short biographies of Holocaust victims. Israeli students look and contemplate. (Photo credit: Filip Warwick)
The Anguish of Liberation in art 1945-1947 (Yad Vashem) reflects how survivors reacted to the liberation through art. A man, barefoot and exposed, wearing torn garments gazes at the viewer. Behind him an elderly, mysterious figure reminiscent of the prophet Elijah raises his hand as in blessing. (Photo credit: Filip Warwick)
The Memorial to the Deportees at Yad Vashem. A monument to the millions of Jews herded onto cattle-cars and transported from all over Europe to the extermination camps. An original cattle-car, appropriated by the German Railway authorities and given to Yad Vashem by the Polish authorities, stands at the center of the memorial site. (Photo credit: Filip Warwick)
Closed to the public and after 3 years of restoration, Block House Two in Auschwitz museum uncovers secrets left behind by Nazis. During renovation a mural sign was revealed in the bathing section. It says in German: “”This is how it should be done!” (Photo credit: Filip Warwick)
Barbed wire, a section Auschwitz museum. (Photo credit: Filip Warwick)
Opposite to the Yad Vashem museum entrance stands a dedication to survivors of the Holocaust. (Photo credit: Filip Warwick)
Found in the clothing of inmates murdered in various camps were photos and documents that they had taken along when they were deported. (Photo credit: Filip Warwick)
Thirty-year-old Stav Shaffir is Israel’s youngest female member of parliament, known as the Knesset. The memory and trauma of the Holocaust, and how it is employed, is an sensitive subject in Israel, including among the ranks of the country’s politicians. (Photo credit: Filip Warwick)
Michael Schudrich is the Chief Rabbi of Poland. He says those survivors who remained in the country, and their descendants, have also had to contend with secondary social impacts on their communities, from Soviet occupation to gentrification-fueled displacement. (Photo credit: Filip Warwick)
The Nożyk Synagogue in Warsaw. Built between 1898 and 1902, it is the only surviving pre-war Jewish Synagogue. It currently houses the Warsaw Jewish Commune and other Jewish organizations. (Photo credit: Filip Warwick)
A Jan Karski bench-styled monument opposite the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. In 1942 and 1943, he informed the Western Allies of the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Nazi extermination camps. Despite telling London and Washington, no one believed Jan Karski’s claims of genocide. Later, Karski became a professor at Georgetown University. (Photo credit: Filip Warwick)
A prisoner exhibit at the Auschwitz Birkenau memorial. The background wall represents images of camp prisoners who died of disease, malnutrition, gassing, mass executions or extreme work under starvation conditions. (Photo credit: Filip Warwick)
Professor Jonathan Webber is a social anthropologist and a former member of the International Council of the Auschwitz Museum. He says the loss of the deeply-rooted Jewish population left an immediate vacuum in Polish society, though it wasn’t recognized as such during the Soviet occupation. (Photo credit: Filip Warwick)
