Within Space We Feel Time: The Creation of Authenticity at Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 1944–2004

This dissertation examines how the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum transformed from a hastily preserved crime scene into a global symbol of Holocaust memory. When Poland's interim government declared in 1947 that the former camp would be "preserved for all times," it launched decades of complex conservation efforts that reshaped how atrocity is remembered worldwide. I investigate several key questions: How did the commitment to preserve this violent site emerge? What meaning did this act hold for survivors, Poland, and Europe? How did conservation practices influence Holocaust memory globally? Through extensive archival research and ethnographic fieldwork, I reveal the paradoxical nature of authenticity at memorial sites: maintaining an appearance of unmediated historical presence requires extensive technical intervention that transforms the very materials it seeks to preserve.

My research shows how two distinct commemorative paradigms developed at the site. At Auschwitz I, museum professionals created a curated presence through exhibitions and restored structures that presented a coherent historical narrative. At Birkenau, by contrast, a commemorative grammar of absence emerged—initially from material constraints but eventually as deliberate aesthetic principle—where ruins themselves became testimony.

The dissertation makes three scholarly contributions. First, it demonstrates how authenticity functions as a constructed mode of historical truth-making rather than an inherent quality, revealing how conservation choices shaped Holocaust understanding through technical procedures, institutional authority, and commemorative ethics. Second, it illuminates how Auschwitz-Birkenau's preservation became a transnational project after 1989, with Jewish organizations and European governments providing unprecedented financial support that reframed conservation as a moral obligation rather than merely a Polish responsibility. Third, it advances theoretical understandings of authenticity by showing how this concept's strategic ambiguity allowed it to mobilize diverse constituencies while concealing underlying tensions. Through five chronological chapters, I trace how authenticity was negotiated, constructed, and redefined over time—from early postwar improvisation to sophisticated preservation techniques, from national commemoration to global heritage status. This analysis reveals not only the history of a pivotal memorial site but also the complex interplay between material preservation and the politics of memory that continues to shape how we confront difficult pasts.