Zone of Interestwith a testimony

Then we drive to Harmeze, to the Labyrinth exhibition. Marian Kolodziej came to Auschwitz with the first transport and for half a century did not say a word about the camp. He began to draw only after a severe stroke, learning to use his hand again, and did not stop until his death. What came of it is a labyrinth of several hundred large format panels that the visitor does not so much walk through as squeeze through. For most groups it is the strongest point of the day.

After that Bor and Budy, the SS canteen, the Remembrance Museum and the commandant's house. That order makes sense in teaching terms: after a survivor's testimony you look differently at the site of the women's penal company, and you listen differently to the story of people who smuggled medicine to prisoners.

What a participant learns along the way

• That Auschwitz was not one place but a network of forty five camps across what is today Poland, Czechia and Germany.
• What the Zone of Interest was and what happened to the people removed from it.
• How a document differs from a testimony and why neither is enough without the other.
• Why a survivor kept silent for half a century before he began to speak, and what forced him to it.
• What the women's penal company was and what happened in it in the autumn of 1942.

This is only part of what we talk about during the programme.