Can Auschwitz Be Saved? - 0 views
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Rede Histórica - on 28 Jan 10"Everyone who visits Auschwitz remembers the hair: almost two tons of it, piled behind glass in mounds taller than a person. When I first visited the camp, in 1991, the hair was still black and brown, red and blond, gray and white-emotionally overwhelming evidence of the lives extinguished there. When I returned this past autumn, the hair was a barely differentiated mass of gray, more like wool than human locks. Only the occasional braid signaled the remnants of something unprecedented and awful-the site where the Third Reich perpetrated the largest mass murder in human history. At least 1.1 million people were killed here, most within hours of their arrival. This January 27 marks the 65th anniversary of Auschwitz's liberation by Soviet soldiers. The Nazis operated the camp between May 1940 and January 1945-and since 1947, the Polish government has maintained Auschwitz, which lies about 40 miles west of Krakow, as a museum and memorial. It is a Unesco World Heritage site, a distinction usually reserved for places of culture and beauty. But Auschwitz-with its 155 buildings and hundreds of thousands of artifacts-is deteriorating. It is a conservation challenge like no other. "Our main problem is sheer numbers," Jolanta Banas, the head of preservation, tells me as we walk through the white-tiled facility where she and her 48-member staff work. "We measure shoes in the ten thousands." Banas introduces me to conservators working to preserve evidence of camp life: fragments of a mural depicting an idealized German family that once decorated the SS canteen, floor tiles from a prisoners barrack. In one room, a team wielding erasers, brushes and purified water clean and scan 39,000 yellowing medical records written on everything from card stock to toilet paper. The Auschwitz camp itself covers 50 acres and comprises 46 historical buildings, including two-story red brick barracks, a kitchen, a crematorium and several brick and concrete administration