“What are people going to withdraw from their visit?”

A “world center for the fight against extremism” must open on January 27 in the former house of a commander SS, near the extermination camp. Jean-Charles Szurek, a researcher specializing in Poland, gives us his feeling.

Ethe central subject of The area of ​​interestthe film by Jonathan Glazer, awarded to the Oscars in 2024. This three -story villa and its vast garden backed by the Auschwitz camp hosted a certain Rudolf Höss, commander SS for four years at the head of the concentration and Extermination of Auschwitz-Birkenau, as well as his wife Hedwig and their five children. Now owned by the Counter Extremism Project, an American NGO, the Höss house is preparing to reopen its doors, this time to host a “world center for the fight against extremism” and welcome tourists from around the world. It will be from January 27, 2025, the date of the 80ᵉ anniversary of the release of the camp. Was it really necessary to transform the villa of one of the main organizers of the Nazi death machine? We interviewed Jean-Charles Szurek, Research Director Emeritus at the CNRS, specialist in Poland and Judeo-Polish relations.

Make Rudolf Höss’s house a “world center for the fight against extremism” does a good idea seem to you?
I have mixed feelings. This initiative falls under the “fictionalization” company in progress around the genocide of the Jews, and in particular the memorialization, museification, site. I am thinking in particular of Jonathan Glazer’s film The area of ​​interest, which is a work on indifference but shows the Auschwitz camp via a fictionalization company, not too badly made, of the Höss family. And it was precisely this choice of fiction that made me uncomfortable – the original house only partially served since the film was also shot in another building. For my part, I share the position of Claude Lanzmann: the messages that fall under the history of the camp and that of the Shoah must remain documented elements. No need for fiction, no need for false gas rooms, false showers, a false garden. Now I have the impression that this project to transform the house is an extension of the film, in addition to making it a museum object. That said, it should be remembered that this building is located outside the camp, it does not belong to the museum.

On and Trop «Museumee» Outchwitzing?
The managers of the Auschwitz museum, when they designed it in 1947, managed to collect the objects that belonged to the deportees, which grasped any visitor who discovers the mountains of glasses, prostheses, hair – I remember the Shock during my first visit, in 1964, when I was a Polish high school student. There is also the space itself, the mere fact of going from Auschwitz 1 to Auschwitz 2 is very strong … Do we really need to “recreate” something more?

But I am not dogmatic, the museum has developed significantly, visitors come en masse, and this new project is part of the implementation of this “museification” of the site, which has experienced different stages. For decades, certain buildings of the museum have, for example, were residential houses. The former director, as well as employees or researchers, lived there. The museum had functional use – in communist Poland, there was a serious housing crisis – while being an exhibition space.

Rarely a museum will have been so instrumental in its history. Where are we today?
It is a complex museum because it testifies to the various strata of the history of post-war Poland. And this is precisely what makes it more interesting than other Musées-Mémoriaux, such as that of Belzec for example, in the south-east of Poland, which is an ultra modern multimedia museum. Auschwitz, with its museological strata, recounts the complexity of the eras in which they have been built. First there was the Stalinist, anti -fascist layer, which made it a Polish and communist memorial. Then, as the loss of legitimacy of the regime progresses, the presence of the Church was strengthened there, and the memorial took a dominant Polish and Catholic. When I returned in 1989, at the end of the Communist regime, to investigate the museological system of the Camp-Museum [Jean-Charles Szurek, La Pologne, les Juifs et le communisme, éd. Michel Houdiard, 2012]Polish memory prevailed, at the expense of the destiny of Jewish deportees, who was obscured-that is to say, he was buried in memory of the Polish martyrdom.

Then things changed, slowly but surely. Part of the original system has been preserved, new exhibitions have been created. The Catholic presence is always very sensitive, but the Jewish memory is fully respected, the deportation of the Jews of Hungary is well shown, the messages are clear. Today, the museum welcomes 2 million people, making it the most visited place in Poland. We offer headphones when you enter it, it has become something else, and the project around the house of Rudolf Höss is part of this evolution, which can sometimes give the impression of browsing an amusement park.

Do you deplore it?
I don’t know, mass tourism is a reality. What will people will withdraw from their visit, for example, from this house by Rudolf Höss, which will house vintage objects, perhaps the chairs of the Commander of Auschwitz? It is the work of sociologists to measure, to study, the effects of the discovery of a martyrological museum, in particular that of Auschwitz. Of course, see tourists being photographed in front of the Birkenau ramp then going to one of the false Jewish restaurants in the Kazimierz district, in Krakow, causes a feeling of discomfort, but that is not that these same people do not will remember nothing other than a selfie, or that they will not come back upset.