Each time I’ve been to Auschwitz, the impact of the concentration and extermination camp has been crippling.

Except this last time, in March of 2026.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau museum and memorial has been undergoing expensive conservation efforts, partly to shore up buildings in danger of simply crumbling under their own weight, and partly to address what curators call new approaches to telling the old stories. The stories of 1.1 - 1.5 million people, from all over Europe, who were murdered or died of starvation, disease and exhaustion.

In an Associated Press article about the newly opened displays, from last December, you find this:

“Witnesses are passing away, the world is changing, technologies are changing, and new generations are emerging, requiring a new approach to the subject,” Andrzej Kacorzyk, the deputy director of the Auschwitz museum, told The Associated Press. “Hence the need to portray humanity, the need to portray this individual fate.”

And that’s where the tactics have lost sight of the strategic objective. And no amount of good intentions fully survives the transition from ruin to institution.

From the perspective of someone who has visited Auschwitz five times over the past few decades, I now see the inherent paradox in the undertaking of memorialization.

When I first visited, shorts and other “beach wear” were forbidden, as was any recording or photography. We were reminded that this was not a display, it was a cemetery. Mind you, there were no cell phones then, so we were not distracted by someone taking a selfie beneath the Arbeit Macht Frei entry gate, or calling a friend to schedule lunch while strolling the paths between the Death Block (#11) and Blocks 5 and 6 which contain enormous bins of hair, shoes, prosthetic devices and luggage taken from victims.

Even a decade ago, when I visited Auschwitz with one of my daughters, she didn’t sleep for several nights after the tour, so horrified was she to be walking the same ground, and floors, as so many condemned others. The daughter I visited with this year was shaken, but not to the same degree. I had been concerned about her sensitivity to the brutality which so affected her normally more stoic sibling, but it didn’t happen. And I wanted to figure out why.

Where once were peeling painted hallways, roughly plastered with photos of prisoners and their documentation, today the blocks are masterpieces of architectural intervention and climate controlled displays. Today, the insides of those original Auschwitz “blocks”, look more like art galleries with tasteful lighting and meticulous arrangements.

It’s totally understandable that crumbling buildings, especially these crumbling buildings, must be preserved, and conservation measures are expensive, but the tasteful renovation has deadened the gut punch that walking through these buildings once delivered. And that gut punch is critical to the impact the museum memorial seeks, to ensure that future generations understand the scope of the cruelty and the human toll extracted in this place.

Some of the updates meet that objective, particularly the newly constructed walkway and tunnel which brings visitors from the entry gates, and security check, under the road and out onto the camp grounds. The stark concrete walls give one the sense of being herded towards some unknown destination, or fate, and the impact is heightened by the sound of a voice intoning the names of victims, broadcast through hidden speakers along the way.

From the exterior, most of the block buildings look the same. Anyone who has read Auschwitz-based novels, seen the movies, or done some research, already knows what individual blocks were for: medical experimentation, extermination with Zyklon B gas, isolation cells made so small prisoners were forced to hunch for days, “courtrooms”, processing areas where prisoners had their heads shaved, their clothing and belongings confiscated and their numbers tattooed onto their forearms. Those displays, which I first saw, were assembled by survivors of the camp just two years after the end of the war, opened to the public in 1950, with most of the displays finalized in 1956 still intact until just recently. Their sheer crude immediacy forced us to face the visceral reality of what had occurred here.

The task of maintaining the integrity and sanctity of the site, while opening the gates to millions of visitors annually, is a delicate balancing act. I give all due respect to those doing their all to pursue the vision of how best to educate and inform the world of the magnitude of suffering and cruelty that took place on a relatively small piece of earth.

That suffering, and that cruelty, is baked into the ground. You can feel it seep into the soles of your feet, through your shoes, as you walk between the blocks, through the “showers” and crematoria, and past the execution wall.

The soil remembers, but not all visitor groups take the time to feel those vibrations, to put themselves in the shoes of those who walked here before so it is up to the curators to make the past relevant, not just to remember but to act on that remembrance. After all, the original intent of opening the evidence of Auchwitz-Birkenau to the world was to ensure that kind of victimization would not reoccur.

That’s why I feel the admirable vision of Director of the Auschwitz Memorial, Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywiński, the author of the conceptual design, Bartłomiej Pochopień, Dr. Piotr Setkiewicz, Head of the Research Center, and Katarzyna Półtorak, Head of the New Main Exhibition Team is to be applauded, even while I feel the execution has somehow missed the objective mark. Their efforts have obviously been rigorous and their dedication unmistakable so it pains me to say the new approach lacks the visceral impact which made the original museum unforgettable.

While saying they wanted the place to speak for itself, to be minimalist, phenomenological, and let the objects and space do the work, somehow the result appeals more to the head than to the heart and guts. More cerebral equals less emotional.

The act of professional conservation and curation, over 12 years, has imposed a kind of order on a place that was powerful because of its chaos and incomprehensibility. The rawness that came from preserving what was found at Auschwitz, and opening it to the public without gauzy mercy, was not a failing of the original exhibition; it was the heart of the exhibition.

So, as I stood amongst the blocks in the weak March sunshine, I no longer heard the murmurs of all the dead as strongly as I once had. Their experiences had been made overt and in the transition, the tragedy made comprehensible and somehow contained.

Music somehow doesn’t fit here so instead, here’s a quick look or listen at the story of the liberation of the camp. While the history gives credit to the Soviets for liberating and providing medical treatment and food to the survivors, I must note that the same Soviet army stayed across the river and allowed the Nazis to bomb Warsaw into rubble, before they moved in to “help”.

Until next time, don’t forget your history.

Thanks for reading Talking With Friends, Sharing the Load! This post is public so feel free to share it.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joannapiros.substack.com/subscribe