Appeal for artifacts for the new permanent exhibition “Far Removed. Austria in Auschwitz”

As Coordination Office for the new Austrian national exhibition at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the National Fund endorses this bid to find historical items:

Appeal for artifacts for the new permanent exhibition “Far Removed. Austria in Auschwitz”

The year 2015 will mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp Auschwitz Birkenau. The Republic of Austria has commissioned a new permanent exhibition to be displayed in Block 17 at the Auschwitz Birkenau Memorial. This new exhibition shall trace the fates of Austrian persecutees in Auschwitz. Groups persecuted by the Nazi regime include Jews, Roma and Sinti, political persecutees, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals and persons deemed “asocial” or “criminal” by the Nazis. Their different experiences of persecution in Austria, their deportation and, in particular, their varied fates in Auschwitz shall form the focus of the exhibition’s narrative. The exhibition will also portray the members of the Austrian resistance group in the main camp at Auschwitz. However, Austrians were also perpetrators of crimes in Auschwitz and this, too, will be described by the exhibition.

The team curating this new exhibition is now seeking to find objects which are connected to Auschwitz Birkenau and which tell stories of Austrians in the concentration camp Auschwitz / Auschwitz II-Birkenau. These could be, for example, personal belongings which were taken or sent to Auschwitz (letters, postcards, photographs, items of clothing etc.), objects which were taken or sent from Auschwitz (letters, finds etc.), or tools or other objects which were produced, given/exchanged or acquired in Auschwitz.

The curatorial team is grateful for every piece of information received. Perhaps you are aware of such an item or are yourself in possession of one and would like to provide it on loan for the exhibition? By doing so, you would be making a valuable contribution towards the documentation of Austrians in Auschwitz.

Please contact

Mr. Hannes Sulzenbacher (Curator – Head of Project)

exhibition@nationalfonds.org