Witnessing Auschwitz 2024

In May 2024, a group of UBC students travelled to Poland to participate in the 10th Witnessing Auschwitz Seminar, designed and led by Dr. Bożena Karwowska of UBC’s Department of Central, Eastern and Northern European Studies (CENES). While studying at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum every day for two weeks, we developed our research projects with unprecedented access to the Museum’s researchers and grounds. This was truly a one-of-a-kind academic and personal experience. We are excited to share what we learned during our time in Poland through our research projects, which we are proud to present on this website.

Please note that this website is a work in progress and will be completely up-to-date before the Witnessing Auschwitz Conference 2024.

About the program

Auschwitz was a place in which several frequently conflicting agendas of Nazi Germany intersected: it was an industrial compound, a concentration camp, a medical research site, and an extermination facility. It served to imprison, terrorize, enslave, and kill. Moreover, Auschwitz is a site of conflicted memories that raises the question of how, and if at all, it can be remembered and commemorated in ways that resist sentimentalization, the recourse to conventional literary, and cinematographic imagery. One of the most pressing issues of the Holocaust studies is this question: how do we educate about Nazi crimes when there are no more survivors to share their stories?

This program takes a multidisciplinary approach and involves lectures, seminars, and workshops on-site, where you will have direct access to historical archives, museums, and leading experts in Holocaust studies. You will conduct independent studies at sites of mass extermination as well as research issues related to the Holocaust in the context of social responsibilities of researchers and professionals. This course is offered by UBC CENES in partnership and/or cooperation with:

• Vancouver Holocaust Educational Center
• Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
• University of Warsaw
• Jewish Historical Institute
• Polish Consulate in Vancouver

About the website

This website was made with UBC WordPress in collaboration with the UBC Library. Conversations about developing a website for the first in-person Witnessing Auschwitz seminar since the COVID-19 pandemic. Our timing coincided with the rapid development and circulation of numerous technology-assisted humanities projects, which impressed us with their ability to preserve and pass down stories beyond the current generation. It was clear to us that Witnessing Auschwitz, as well as other disciplines in the humanities, must adapt to the changing expectations for education in an increasingly digitized world. This website is not the only digital resource created through the Witnessing Auschwitz program. UBC’s Auschwitz Academic Guide was launched in the summer of 2021 to present projects and accompany Auschwitz: History, Place and People. An Academic Guide to the Camp Complex. This website, however, bears some critical differences.

We created this website primarily to encourage Witnessing Auschwitz students to explore the concept of digital humanities. Holocaust education does not have to stay stagnant or be costly. As more online resources and platforms become available for public consumption, educators and scholars must evolve by engaging with a variety of teaching tools. These can come in the form of a digital archive, an interactive map, or even a podcast. The projects that you are about to see on this website are truly unique, fascinating, and incredibly important for Holocaust studies. As time goes on, there will be less survivors to tell their stories. When no survivors remain, it will become our responsibility to bear witness. Photographs taken by: Marcie Schlick

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