While photo might focus on the massive monument the Soviets put up at the site of the former concentration camp of Płaszów, this post is more concerned with the green space at the bottom of the image. The structure sits on top of a small hill, at the bottom of which is a mass grave. This mass grave, like most of the Płaszów site, is unmarked. Płaszów is a public park nowadays, with signage only being added in recent years to label and indicate the history of the space. When we visited the site, the only reason we knew that this space was the site of a mass grave is due to our guide telling us so. Because of this we know that there is a very slim chance that anyone visiting the site would know that this specific patch of green space sits on a mass grave and therefore we afford them more leeway in judging their behaviours. While it felt wrong to watch a man walk his dog over the mass grave, I could not blame him for his actions because I knew that it was unlikely he knew what the space was. Yet at other sites, many of which also lack proper signage, we assume that everyone is informed about the history and knows the proper social behaviour to follow in these spaces. As we saw with the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma, when sites are properly labelled and have clear boundaries, people are more able to interact with these spaces with intent and respect.
Month: September 2024
Jewish Ghetto Memorial
This is the Jewish Ghetto Memorial or “Ghetto Heroes Square” in Kraków, which commemmorates those who were forced into the ghetto and murdered. The memorial itself consists of 70 large chairs each representing around 1000 Jewish victims deproted from the ghetto to concentration camps. In this photo, a woman sits on one of the chairs, looking through the back of it, and posing for a photo. Not pictured here is the man off to the left, posing with the woman for a photo a few moments before this photo was taken. How do we interpret this photoshoot? If it were earlier in the trip I would have likely been upset to see this image, thinking that these people were making a mockery of the space. Now however, I am more inclined to try and understand where they might be coming from. Who knows if they are simply tourists who thought that this space was a good photo opportunity, without any knowledge of the place’s significance. Or, they could be descendants of survivors who came here with specific intent to see this, and other, sites and prove that the Nazis did not succeed. Nothing could have prepared me to challenge my academic bias in this way before the trip, but facing them head on in these emotionally charged situations forced me to reevaluate what I consider to be “appropriate” behaviour.