MEMORIAL SITE AS COMMITMENT SPACE. IDEOLOGICAL AND ARTISTIC CONCEPT OF THE MUSEUM AND MEMORIAL SITE IN SOBIBÓR

Abstract

The implementation of the new ideological and artistic concept of the Museum and Memorial Site in Sobibór on the site of the former Nazi German death camp selected in the 2013 competition is discussed. The winning design is analysed; apart from the arranging of the area of the former camp, it also envisaged raising of a museum, the latter stage already completed with the building opened to the public in 2020. The concept of ‘commitment space’ is proposed by the Author as best characterising a memorial site created on the premises of the former Nazi concentration camps and death camps for the people of Jewish descent. As a departure point, earlier examples of commemorating similar sites are recalled, beginning with the early monuments from the 1940s, through the 1957 competition for the International Monument to the Victims of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp, the latter of major impact on the process of the redefinition of monuments. The then awarded design of the The Road Monument by Oskar Hansen and his team, however unimplemented owing to the protest of former Auschwitz prisoners, became from that time onwards a benchmark for subsequent concepts. Also the mentioned memorial design on the area of the former Belzec extermination camp from 2004 is related to James E. Young’s concept of a counter-monument. The main subject of the paper’s analysis is, however, the reflection on means thanks to which the currently mounted Museum and Memorial Site in Sobibór, including the permanent display at the newly-raised Museum, become ‘commitment space’ for contemporary public on different perception levels of their multi-sensual activity essential in the process of remembrance.