Introduction: new perspectives on Auschwitz

Abstract

The word Auschwitz is multifaceted. Indeed, Auschwitz is a site of mass atrocity, a museum, a cemetery, a focal point of Holocaust memory, a place of education, a town in south west Poland, a tourist “must-see,” and a place where complex negotiations of identity and morality take place. Overshadowing all of these nuances, the word itself has entered common vernacular as shorthand for the Holocaust or, even more generally, as an example of an uncomplicated ethical binary. In this way, the word masks a complex and difficult history, often functioning as a linguistic and historical reduction that relies on its symbolic currency over and above historical accuracy. These complexities were the focus of the second conference of the European Association for Holocaust Studies, held in Kraków in November 2017. The present volume aims to continue the fruitful discussions that began at that conference, and to spark further discussion on the question(s) of Auschwitz. Since the contributions all revolve around the same theme, some overlap and repetition is inevitable. However, as will become clear, each of the articles in the volume offers something new to the extensive criticism that already exists on the topic of Auschwitz.