Holocaust memorial exhibition set to showcase in Durban

THE ‘Seeing Auschwitz’ exhibition will open its doors for a limited time in Durban on Monday, April 24, at the Durban Holocaust and Genocide Centre (DHGC) on 44 KE Masinga Road. The exhibition, created by Musealia with the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, in collaboration with the United Nations (UN) and UNESCO, and presented in Durban by the DHGC, will invite visitors to reflect on the true dimension of the horrors committed by Nazi Germany. Entry is free.

The exhibition uses analysis of the scarce photographic evidence of the camp that has survived to the present day as well as the process of the construction of the collective memory of Auschwitz and other contemporary genocides.

Seeing Auschwitz confronts the viewer with rare photographs captured by perpetrators, victims and liberators. The images provide unsettling perspectives and stark evidence of mass murder, but also of the humanity of the people who perished there. The vast collection of images comes from varying sources, including Allied aerial pictures of the camps – many taken by the South African Air Force’s 60 Squadron, one of the leading aerial photographic units operating in Europe during the war, documentation of the deportation process and living within Auschwitz as well as insight into life before the camps.

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The exhibition presents more than 100 images of victims and perpetrators, as well as snapshots of the systematic extermination process and scenes of everyday life in Auschwitz, mostly immortalised by the SS perpetrators themselves and audiovisual testimonies of survivors. These provide unequivocal evidence of the crimes committed at Auschwitz and, at the same time, present a great challenge to the viewer.

Lead curator and one of the world’s leading experts on the Holocaust, Paul Salmons says, “They look like faithful portraits of an instant, but these photographs are not neutral sources at all: we are looking at a piece of reality but seen from the Nazi perspective. It is necessary to stop and analyse them to really see what each image truly reveals.”

The contents of the exhibition have been developed by Musealia and their team of experts, led by curator Paul Salmons, so that each visitor can get the most out of their visit and understand the facts presented in the exhibition regardless of their prior historical knowledge.

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Director of Musealia, Luis Ferreiro, says: “Memory, both individual and collective, is largely formed through images. In the case of Auschwitz, this is especially problematic, given its provenance. This is what we wanted to explore in this exhibition, which also allows us to extend our gaze to the present, to question ourselves if we have really known how to see Auschwitz after everything that happened from 1945 onwards”.

The Seeing Auschwitz exhibition has been conceived and created by the Spanish company Musealia together with the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Poland. It was originally developed for the United Nations’ observance of the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, and exhibited at UN Headquarters, New York, UNESCO Headquarters, Paris and United Nations Information Offices worldwide.

For more information about how to view the exhibition, visit https://dbnholocaust.co.za. Centre opening times are from Sunday to Thursday from 09:00 to 16:00 and Fridays from 09:00 to 14:00. (Guided tours can be arranged by appointment.)

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