Auschwitz tour guides 'have never been more important'

SBS Europe Correspondent Brett Mason delves into the inner workings of a team of tour guides at the Auschwitz Museum in Poland, who are tasked with informing visitors from across the globe about the horrors of the past.

The barbed wire perimeter fence as seen from inside Auschwitz I, looking beyond to the SS commandant’s office, in Poland. Source: @BrettMasonNews

On the eve of the 70th anniversary of its opening, the Auschwitz Museum in Poland is on the verge of welcoming a record-breaking two million visitors in a single year.

“The history of Auschwitz is for many people very important now, in these years, in these days, when we have so many problems and so many dangers,” Andrzej Kacorzyk, Director of the International Centre for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust, told SBS.

According to Mr Kacorzyk, who is the man responsible for training the museum’s 286 expert guides, the public’s search for answers means their work as Holocaust educators, “has never been more important".

“Definitely, it is,” said Tomasz Michaldo, who maintains the museum’s ‘methodology of guiding’.

“I think a lot of the visitors here are looking for those answers.”

In 2015, 1,725,700 people from all but four of the world’s nations toured the former Nazi concentration and extermination camp. 

Poland (425,200), the United Kingdom (220,000), the United States (141,500), Germany (93,800) and Italy (76,500) accounted for the five largest nationalities of visitors, with Australia (29,500) ranking sixteenth.

Last year, there was a significant year-on-year rise in the number of visitors from Ireland (57 per cent), Hungary (56 per cent), South America (51 per cent), China (36 per cent) and Germany (24 per cent).

Visitor numbers to the open-air museum have steadily increased since 2001, falling only in 2008 and 2013.

Auschwitz guides must complete five months of intensive training, more than 100 hours of lectures and pass a rigorous written, oral and practical ‘triple test’ before they are permitted to lead guests.

To reflect the increasingly diverse demand, tours are now offered in eighteen languages: English, Croatian, Czech, French, Hebrew, Spanish, Japanese, Dutch, German, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovakian, Swedish, Hungarian, Portuguese and Italian.

A Korean guide is in the final stages of training.

Israeli students huddle to sing their national anthem, Hatikvah, after visiting gas chamber and crematorium 1. Source: Brett Mason

“There are many thousands of people who are asking us about what happened here, but they compare the history between the history in Asia,” Andrzej Kacorzyk explained.

“These people are comparing the history of Auschwitz with Hiroshima and Nagasaki and very fresh history from nuclear plant in Fukushima. Koreans compare with what is happening in Korea.”

While museums and historical sites across the world have embraced audio headsets and interactive video exhibits in place of guides, such moves have been strongly resisted by survivors, staff and visitors at Auschwitz.

“I believe Auschwitz is not just a museum,” Mr Michaldo said.

A visitor examining one of the many portraits of murdered prisoners, which line the corridor of Block Six at Auschwitz I Source: Brett Mason

“You’re about trying to give victims names, identities, so you cannot use any type of machine to achieve this.  You cannot use an audio guide in such a place. You can only truly understand Auschwitz with a guide.”

Mr Kacorzyk agreed: “We must give the chance to touch the authenticity.  Guides – people - are able to share this history, the individual stories.”

The European Union was founded in the wake of the Holocaust and Second World War, and the United Kingdom’s referendum vote to leave the European Union, coupled with the rise of right-leaning, nationalistic political parties, politicians and policies across the continent – including Poland – has been a major topic of conversation among staff and visitors.

“Many visitors look for the answers to those kinds of questions here,” Mr Michaldo said.

'Death Wall' – the courtyard of Block 11, Auschwitz I, where the German SS shot and killed more than 5,000 people Source: Brett Mason

“We teach not only the history of Auschwitz, but broader history involving anti-Semitism before, during and after the Holocaust. I don’t want [visitors] to know dates, numbers, they can find that on the internet – but rethink, reflect on this themselves – and maybe answer some of these contemporary political questions.”

While he now leads the Museum’s education program, Mr Kacorzyk himself started as a tour guide and recalls a time when some German adults, particularly men, choosing to stay on buses and not visit the site or participate in the tour.

“Not anymore,” he said

“Now, we have a totally new generation.”

Some of the names of the 4.2 million victims contained in the 'Book of Names' exhibit in Block 27 of Auschwitz I Source: Brett Mason

The youngest guide here is aged 26, the oldest 69.

“Many of them say the main reason they want to be a guide is because their relatives survived or perished here,” Mr Michaldo added.

“Others were so impacted on their first visit they decided they wanted to become guides for themselves. A guide isn’t just someone who takes you around, but also a therapist, we have to learn to deal with all emotions, all day.  It’s both physically and mentally difficult.”