By: Theresa Xu
After Dr. Teresa Wontor-Cichy showed us a censored letter from a prisoner in the Hess’ garden, I found the topic of censorship extremely interesting. The study of the censorship system within Auschwitz adds greater nuance to the comprehensive picture of the harsh conditions the prisoners suffered, while it also helps us to understand the camp dynamics. The dual essentialities of censored letters’ textuality and materiality are not being systemically explored, interpreted, and exposed yet.
As a volunteer of Wikipedia, I believe the transparent and negotiated procedure of editing an entry and the open-source nature of Wikipedia lies the opposite of the notion of censorship. I am concerned about the increasingly severe Holocaust denial in encyclopedias recently as well. Thus, I decided to create a Wikipedia entry titled “Censorship in Auschwitz” to systematically introduce censorship and its related concepts that happened in Auschwitz and Birkenau.