FOREWORD BY THE
AUSTRIAN CAMP
COMMUNITY AUSCHWITZ
AND THE INTERNATIONAL
AUSCHWITZ COMMITTEE

What effect can a presentation of an exhibition, showing an image of Auschwitz which students had when they were there, have? Which value does Auschwitz represent in the Internet?
The "World Wide Web" has remained uncontrollable so far and thus is an important medium for Neonazis, right-extremists and revisionists. Users can get information about technical details how to construct bombs or can support undemocratic ideologies which call for destabilization of democracy.

"Auschwitz - Final Station Extermination" was an important exhibition; therefore, it's only a logical consequence that the issue should become a milestone within the analysis of the Third Reich and the NS-extermination policy. The Internet should not belong to revisonists only. Both historians and survivors of the concentration camps must not be afraid of using the computer when talking about the past. The Internet is a very important didactic source and auxiliary.

Today, Auschwitz is too often seen as a part of the past, as something which doesn't hurt anymore, since the generation of the eye-witnesses is dying out and because we have other problems. But many of these problems can only be solved by talking about the past and taking responsibility for it. The world wide renaissance of extreme right tendencies in politics, society, economy and culture did not occur in a vacuum. The great German poet Bert Brecht said that the womb where it all came from ist still fertile. He said so after the end of the Third Reich, well knowing that the past ist still alive. The steady confrontation with one's own, tragic history is necessary in order to recognize antidemocratic and antiemancipating tendencies in time - and in order to warn. If the death of at least one and a half million Europeans in Auschwitz - the majority of them Jews and Gypsies, but also political and social opponents - had any sense, then ist is the sense to warn. Knowing what once happened in Auschwitz, nobody can say anymore that he hadn't known what went on, nor can he forget what would happen if democracy was destroyed and people stigmatized and persecuted.

Just like the sword of Damokles, Auschwitz hangs above us all. In order to not let history repeat itself, the study of Auschwitz is necessary - as a synonym for the biggest crime of all mankind. Only those who take responsibility for the past and are aware of it, have a chance for a positive and consciously lived future. The exhibition "Auschwitz - Final Station Extermination" has assumed this responsibility and we would like to thank the organizers for it.

Hoping that the memory will not end with the death of the survivors, the generation of KZ-victims whose story will be told on the following pages, put the care into the hands of those who never had to face Auschwitz themselves. But even somebody who did not experience the concentration camp, who didn't survive the daily horror and therefore cannot really understand because of the lack of sensual and emotional or physical knowledge, can contribute to fight any inhuman tendencies, any contempt for people and can work for democracy in the most vivid way.

History loses its direct authenticity with its last survivor, but not its meaning. Maybe it will once be possible to overcome the pessimism of the poet Ingeborg Bachmann who wrote: "History teaches, but doesn't find any students." Auschwitz was a hell for those who survived it, but Auschwitz was a real place with people who tortured and killed and people who were tortured and killed. All that is happening again today, under different circumstances - but as bureaucratically planned and organized mass murder of millions of innocent people, a mass murder which was made possible by an administration that pursued that aim, it could not be repeated after Auschwitz. Today, Auschwitz is a part of our history and thus very present. In order to honour the dead, it is obviously most important to fight all tendencies that once led to Auschwitz: Racisms, xenophobia, hate against minorities, against women, antisemitism, indifference, the search for a new leader... That is the story that Auschwitz will go on telling - forever. Auschwitz is more than a village, a place, but it is the name of a whole attitude which undoubtedly is in the air whenever somebody demands "Foreigners out". Auschwitz is a fact far beyond all facts, it has become a symbol, and therefore is so important - for everybody. What remains is the hope that Auschwitz will go through the world in the Internet and will leave is traces in the heads of those who will read these textes. In order finally to let history find its students...

Mag. Susanne Kowarc
International Auschwitz Committee
Austrian Camp Community Auschwitz