Oswiecim Town

From Yahoo:

“Life in Oswiecim, a town in Auschwitz's shadow”

Only train tracks and barbed wire separate the former German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau from Oswiecim. Its 40,000 Polish residents try to lead normal lives despite knowing their town will always be associated with the Holocaust, much like Hiroshima is forever tied to the atomic bomb. On Friday, it will once again be back in the spotlight when German Chancellor Angela Merkel pays her first visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau. For locals, the burden of history is tough to shake. "Visitors believe that even three generations later, we should be in mourning all day, every day," resident Dawid Karlik told AFP this week. The 24-year-old is a student at the college located just 200 metres (650 feet) from the camp's infamous gate bearing the chilling Nazi message "Arbeit macht frei", or "Work will set you free". Hundreds of thousands of Europeans passed through this gate before being gassed to death or killed by hard labour, hunger, disease, medical experiments. Most of them were Jews, but also Catholic Poles, Roma, Soviet soldiers and others. "Yes, we know the history. The building where I study had previously served as housing for SS women. But today it's our school," Karlik said. Fellow student Anna Duda added that "it is the Germans who built the biggest death camp here during the war." "We, the residents of Oswiecim, had nothing to do with it. But we remember and have to live a normal life here despite the difficult past." Karlik works at the library of the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum, and wants to eventually become a tour guide there.

- Empty hotels -

This year, the museum expects a record 2.3 million visitors. And yet, Oswiecim's hotels stand empty. Tourists rarely spend the night in Oswiecim, a town with 800 years of history, preferring to stay in the nearby city of Krakow. In an attempt to revamp the town's image, high-profile journalist Dariusz Maciborekn launched the annual music event Life Festival Oswiecim in 2010. Rock stars like Santana and Sting have sung and called for world peace in front of thousands of people there. But this year's edition was cancelled because of a lack of funding.

^ I can understand how frustrating it must be for the residents of Oswiecim to forever be remembered as the site of the largest German Concentration and Death Camp. While Auschwitz (I use “Auschwitz” to refer to the German built and run Concentration and Death Camp and use “Oswiecim” to refer to the Polish town nearby) is a tourist site that receives visitors from around the world it is not a carefree and fun tourist place, but a very somber site that doesn’t really make people who visit want to spend money on souvenirs, hotels, other so Oswiecim doesn’t really benefit from the visitors to Auschwitz. Unfortunately, Oswiecim and its residents have to deal with the same problems that other cities around Poland have to deal with – reminding the world that it was the Germans (not the Poles) who started World War 2 and who murdered millions upon millions of men, women and children throughout Europe and built many Ghettoes, Concentration Camps, Labor Camps and Death Camps in Poland to achieve their goal of a German Master Race. This is a burden that Poland has had to deal with for the past 74 years and one that they will, sadly, have to deal with for many years to come. ^

https://www.yahoo.com/news/life-oswiecim-town-auschwitzs-shadow-151329959.html