On Thursday, January 25, at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, representatives of the former Yugoslav republics signed a "historic" Agreement on financing the re-establishment of a joint permanent exhibition in the museum of the former Auschwitz concentration camp, as a place of remembrance for the victims of the most notorious concentration camp of Nazi Germany.
The agreement was signed by the representatives of Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Slovenia, with the coordination of UNESCO.
Thus, after 15 years, the first step towards setting up a new exhibition was made.
The shame of all the countries that emerged from SFRY
With the signature of the representatives of all the post-Yugoslav republics, the exhibition in Auschwitz will finally be set up again, and the main question is who will give what and how it will be arranged, commented for "Vreme" writer and translator Ivan Ivanji the news about the agreement signed in Paris on the return of the "Yugoslav pavilion" in Auschwitz in Poland.
In Auschwitz, the prisoners were separated according to nationality, so there were "Yugoslavs" there, but it was not said which part of Yugoslavia they were from, Ivanji recalls.
"From 2008 until today, to the great shame of all the states created by the disintegration of the SFRY, they were not represented. If any of the visitors wanted to leave a flower, they had nowhere. For a superficial viewer from a seventh country, it appears that there were no Yugoslavs in Auschwitz, that none of our people were there, which I consider a shame for all six countries," says Ivanji, who spent ten days in Auschwitz, after which he was deported to another Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald, in Germany.
He reminds that the exhibition in the pavilion was set up in 1963 and that it was organized by the Union of Fighters of Yugoslavia at that time, and that it was canceled because the newly formed states could not come to an agreement.
What was in the old setup?
When the pavilion was closed, the exhibition items were sent for safekeeping to the Museum of Yugoslavia in Belgrade.
According to writing of Balkan Insight, the exhibition mainly featured pictures of Yugoslav partisans, graphic depictions of the torture and suffering of inmates from Yugoslav camps, photocopies of German documents that speak of the huge Yugoslav casualties in the war, including orders for mass reprisals against partisan resistance.
There were also works of art, including the sculpture of Vida Jocić, who herself survived Auschwitz.
"Completely absent from the exhibition - in accordance with the global memory of the Second World War at the time - was the particular memory of the Yugoslav Jews and Roma killed in the camp because of their national, not anti-fascist, identity," he writes. Jelena Subotic in the text on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
About the new exhibition
The artistic vision of the new exhibition was created by Daniel Libeskind and Henri Lustiger Thaler from Libeskind Studio, with the support of the Herman Foundation, the Ministry of Culture of Serbia said in a statement.
The agreement foresees the joint financing of the renovation and conservation of the first floor of Block 17 and the common rooms and structures that the former Yugoslav republics share with Austria, as well as the joint financing of the costs of implementing a joint permanent installation at the place of remembrance of the victims from the territory of the former Yugoslavia in the concentration camp and the Auschwitz extermination camp -Birkenau.
"I welcome this agreement, but now comes the main work," says Ivanji.
About the Auschwitz Museum
The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum was opened in June 1947, on the site of the former Auschwitz death camp in Poland.
In 1960, the countries whose citizens were deported to the camp were given separate pavilions to set up "national exhibitions".
The Yugoslav National Exhibition was opened in 1963 at the initiative of the Union of Associations of Fighters of the National Liberation War of Yugoslavia.
About 1941 million people, mostly Jews, perished in Auschwitz in the period from 1945 to 1,1.
The day of the liberation of the camps, January 27, was declared by the UN as the International Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Holocaust.
During the Holocaust, which represents the systematic destruction of the Jewish people during World War II, approximately six million people were killed.
