'How can you live here?': Life in Auschwitz's shadow

The windows of the mayor's house in Brzezinka (Birkenau in German), Oswiecim's neighbouring village, overlook the camp known as Auschwitz 2 (Wojtek RADWANSKI)
The windows of the mayor's house in Brzezinka (Birkenau in German), Oswiecim's neighbouring village, overlook the camp known as Auschwitz 2 (Wojtek RADWANSKI) (Wojtek RADWANSKI/AFP/AFP)

Hila Weisz-Gut, a 34-year-old Israeli, is sure her Auschwitz survivor grandmother would be outraged by her choice to move to Oswiecim, a Polish town in which Nazi Germany built the death camp.

"If she was alive, she would be very angry with me living here," said Weisz-Gut, a researcher in Holocaust studies who relocated to Oswiecim to follow her Polish husband-to-be.

Auschwitz has become a symbol of the Holocaust of six million European Jews, one million of whom died at the site between 1940 and 1945, along with more than 100,000 non-Jews.

Weisz-Gut has now lived for over a year in Oswiecim, a town of around 40,000 inhabitants whose name was Germanised into Auschwitz by the Nazis during the Second World War when they occupied Poland.

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"I get this question from every single group of Israeli students that I meet: how can you live here?" said Weisz-Gut whose research focuses on the Jewish and Polish communities in the town during the interwar years.

"Auschwitz was built over 80 years ago, but Oswiecim dates back more than 800 years already," she told AFP.

Sitting in a cafe just two kilometres from the site of the former extermination camp, she says the town is "a good place to live".

Auschwitz was liberated 80 years ago on Monday and a ceremony with dozens of survivors -- among the few remaining -- is due to be held there.

- 'Normal European town' -

On the eve of World War II, Jews made up over 60 percent of the town's population.

Now, Hila Weisz-Gut is widely thought to be the only Jew living in Oswiecim.

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For Janusz Chwierut, the mayor, his town and the former camp where the Nazis slaughtered over a million people "are two worlds apart".

The Germans built the camp at Oswiecim "solely for reasons of transport logistics," he said.

"They could have done it anywhere else in Europe: in France, Belgium or Italy.

"Of course, this made us, as a city and its residents, become custodians of this tragic memory that we are carefully preserving," he said.

But he also said the town has the right "to develop normally like any normal European town."

Witold Urbanski, a 44-year-old born in Oswiecim, said the town was only now beginning to emerge from the shadow of Auschwitz.

Until recently, he recalled, people only talked about it in the context of the camp, and "all the road signs only pointed in its direction."

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"Today, the town is developing and the economic and social situation of the inhabitants is improving," he told AFP, adding that his peers "no longer feel as burdened by the past" as the older generation.

Urbanski said the Auschwitz Museum, which employs a total of around 850 people, is seen in town as "just another workplace".

- Good place to live -

The windows of the mayor's house in Brzezinka (Birkenau in German), Oswiecim's neighbouring village, overlook the camp known as Auschwitz 2.

The barbed wire is covered by a coating of fresh snow.

Andrzej Ryszka built the house in the 1970s and said he never thought about moving.

"In those days, you built wherever you could," he explained.

He brought up three children here.

They still come for family lunches on Sundays.

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Only visitors, sometimes express shock at the grim surroundings to which he has become accustomed.

"The most important is to remember what happened here, to commemorate the people who died, and to pass on this memory from one generation to the next so that such a tragedy never happens again," the mayor said.

Every year, Ryszka takes part in numerous commemorations of the victims of the Nazi camp.

"That's what counts, not the idea that people shouldn't live here," he added.

"It's a good place to live, it's quiet here, and we have all the necessary infrastructure."

For Hila Weisz-Gut, moving to Oswiecim is "a tribute" to her grandmother and a victory of life over death.

Nazi Germany "tried to kill my family. They tried to kill my people. And not only Jewish people -- all kinds of people. And they didn't succeed. For me it's an accomplishment to live here," Weisz-Gut said.

"I have to admit that I had doubts about it, but after some time I see myself raising a family here... This is quite a good place to raise the next generation and to educate them about tolerance and anti-discrimination."

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