The workshop “Auschwitz as World Heritage – UNESCO, Poland and History Politics” analyses the events that led to the inscription of Auschwitz-Birkenau in the World Heritage List and its further development as a World Heritage site. The focus is not only on assessing cultural and political processes at global and transnational levels, but also on investigating regional and national as well as locally rooted developments.
After the adoption of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention in 1972, Poland was one of the most active members and one of those states submitting the first proposals to the new World Heritage list. The Polish nominations in 1978 included not only the old towns of Krakow and Warsaw, the Wielicka salt mine and the Białowieża national park, but also the former concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. This proposal was initially rejected, but already at the second session of the World Heritage Committee in 1979 the site named “Auschwitz concentration camp” was registered on the World Heritage List.
The workshop “Auschwitz as World Heritage – UNESCO, Poland and History Politics” analyses the events that led to the inscription of Auschwitz-Birkenau in the World Heritage List and its further development as a World Heritage site. The focus is not only on assessing cultural and political processes at global and transnational levels, but also on investigating regional and national as well as locally rooted developments. Thus, the workshop will examine the changing role of Auschwitz remembrance in Poland in a historical perspective as well as history politics, heritage preservation and culture politics in an international context. Experts from different historical disciplines and social sciences, practitioners of conservation, and specialists dealing with the site convene in order to discuss implications of the Polish nomination of the Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau for inscription in the World Heritage list in 1978. What consequences did the status “World Heritage site” have for Auschwitz-Birkenau? Can the entry of Auschwitz Concentration Camp on the World Heritage List in 1979 be read as an expression of the universalization of the Holocaust from the 1960s onward? Who used the World Heritage programme of UNESCO in this context to pursue global, national or local policies, with what aims and under what conditions?
The workshop is hosted by the research project “Knowledge of the World – Heritage of Mankind: The History of UNESCO Cultural and Natural Heritage” (http://www.ieg-unesco.eu) which started at the Leibniz Institute of European History in July 2013. The project consists of a longitudinal study focusing on the emergence of the UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage as well as the further development of the programme from 1972 to 1994. Depth is added by four studies dealing with sites that have had a specific effect on the World Heritage programme since its beginnings in the 1970s and 1980s: the Galápagos Islands, Aachen Cathedral, the Old City of Jerusalem and the former concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Details: http://www.ieg-unesco.eu
Contact: Dr. Andrea Rehling & Julia Röttjer, M.A.
unesco@ieg-mainz.de
PROGRAMME
Friday, 18 July 2014
9:00 Johannes Paulmann: Welcome/ Andrea Rehling: Introduction
Panel 1:
The changing role of Auschwitz Heritage in a historical perspective
9:30 Julia Röttjer: Auschwitz-Birkenau as “dissonant” World Heritage since the 1970s
10:15 Jonathan Huener: The Politics and Culture of Commemoration at Auschwitz
11:15 Heidemarie Uhl: Heidemarie Uhl: From the Margins to the Center of European and Global Memory: The Transformation of Holocaust Remembrance as historical context of Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial
12:00 Marek Kucia: The Meanings of Auschwitz in Poland, 1945 to the Present
Panel 2:
Polish history politics and conservation of cultural heritage in an international context
14:15 Danuta Kłosek-Kozłowska: The Spirit of Place and the Place of Spirits. Auschwitz-Birkenau former Nazi Death Camps
15:00 Piotr Trojanski: The problems of commemoration of Jewish victims at Auschwitz Memorial and Museum during the Communist time (1947-1989)
16:00 Marek Rawecki: Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum protection zones. Managing the legacy of the former death camp
17:00 Discussion
