Remix News

Tag: museum

  • Former Polish PM chosen to join Auschwitz Museum Council, and the left isn’t happy

    It turns out once again that according to those on the left, although the Auschwitz German death camp lies on Polish soil, Poland’s authorities should not even concern themselves with that terrible place. Well, perhaps the only thing they should do is accept Polish alleged co-responsibility for the German factories of death.

    Attacks against former Prime Minister Beata Szydło, who was chosen by Deputy Prime Minister Piotr Gliński to join the Auschwitz Museum Council (a body meant to oversee the fulfillment of the museum’s goals), are an example of the left’s strategy when it comes to shaping the memory of the Second World War. They say that Poland is meant to be silent when it comes to Auschwitz and at very most, simply pay for the upkeep of this horrible heritage of German occupation.

    Poland is also not meant to speak in context of what happened during the Second World War, especially in relation to the Holocaust. But this context was Polish suffering and this context ruins the absurd and increasingly deceitful narrative about some “Nazis” and the local population which allegedly eagerly helped them and German soldiers who were “full of compassion”.

    Stripping Auschwitz away from the context of Polish fate is a process which is meant to facilitate the manipulation of history and the division of blame separated from war-time reality.

    Auschwitz, prior to the creation of a factory of death in Birkenau, was a concentration camp for Poles. In this camp, they were murdered not with gas, but with other efficient methods: starvation, disease, slave labor, phenol, and execution. Auschwitz was made to terrorize Poles, both in Lesser Poland and Silesia and other regions, and the camp’s infamy was spread near and far. Auschwitz was also a huge test for Poles living in the vicinity. Many of them triumphed over this trial.

    Gliński emphasized that he nominated Szydło to the Auschwitz Museum Council as a person with an immense amount of political experience, significant social sensitivity and high social support.  He also said a factor behind her nomination was that she is a person who “hails from Oświęcim soil and whose family has lived in the former camp’s vicinity for years”. [Oświęcim is a Polish name of Auschwitz].

    This is an incredibly crucial factor in the whole matter. Szydło had spoken about Auschwitz many times from the perspective of the people who lived near the camp.

    Last year, she revealed a plaque dedicated to railwaymen who sacrificed their lives to support and save the camp’s prisoners.

    Szydło commented on her experiences growing up in Oświęcim, the town near which the German camp was constructed.

    “I was born in Oświęcim 18 years after the fact. I learned about those days from the stories of my loved ones, who lived in these lands for generations and from the stories of those who survived on both sides of the camp fences. My schooldays were filled with meetings with former prisoners, visits to the museum on occasion of anniversaries somewhat assimilated us with the tragedy. The memories of those who faced camp reality during the war, who were in the ‘lager’ and those, who lived in its shadow are incredibly different. Yet, they had something in common. They were connected by the darkness, which lingered on both sides even on sunny days.”

  • France is building a museum about the horrors of terrorism

    In the past ten years, terrorist attacks in France have claimed nearly 300 lives and about a 1,000 more injured, with the vast majority of these attacks coming at the hands of Islamic extremists. The country most affected by Islamist extremism in Europe wants to deal with the trauma by building a new museum.

    France has experienced 50 terrorist attacks in the last ten years, with the massacres at concerts, seaside promenades, or Christmas markets, leaving the country deeply shaken.

    A new museum of the horrors of terrorism is designed to heal the wounds, but opponents of French President Emmanuel Macron said a museum is not what the country really needs, but instead effective border control, a reduction in immigration, deportation, and a focus on battling extremism.

    The museum aims to preserve the memory of the collective trauma of recent years, to map the development of a terrible phenomenon over the centuries, to reportedly to help the French “cope” with the fact that their lives are often under threat from the next terrorist attack, according to Czech news portal Idnes.cz.

    After all, it has not been half a year since the murder of the Parisian teacher Samuel Paty shook the whole world, involving an 18-year-old Chechen radical who cut off Paty’s head for showing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad to students during a lecture on freedom of speech. Just two weeks later, a young Tunisian murdered three people at a basilica in Nice.

    Some French have become fatalistic about reversing terrorism in the country, claiming nothing can be done to make the “phenomenon” vanish.

    “The very fact that we are creating a memorial museum while the phenomenon of terrorism has no chance of vanishing in the years to come is a way of showing our capacity to take a step back,” said historian Henry Rousso, who oversees the project.

    “It is a form of resistance through culture, knowledge, intelligence, and the transmission of experiences,” added an expert in modern French history, who was also involved in the construction of the Normandy Landing Monument and the Shoah Monument in Paris.

    Countries such as Hungary have had security experts argue there that the lack of Islamic terrorist attacks the country experiences has to do with 

    Terrorists in a display case? A thorny issue

    The opening of the museum, which President Emmanuel Macron promised to build three years ago, is planned for 2027. The location will be decided next spring, and it is likely to be built in the Paris area.

    The exhibition will include a list of the names of all victims of terrorism in France and the French who died in attacks abroad. Researchers are already collecting suitable exhibits: messages sent by victims to their loved ones in the last moments of their lives, poems and drawings left at piety sites, documents from court trials.

    The exhibition is supposed to begin in 1974, when the Venezuelan terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, known as Carlos or Jackal, carried out an assassination in a Paris department store.

    The perpetrators will also have their place in the museum. This already raises the question of whether the authors of the project are inadvertently glorifying them.

    Henry Rousso denies this. He believes that terrorists cannot be left out of the memorial.

    “It is a history museum. When we do one on Nazism, we have to mention Himmler and Hitler,“ explained the historian.

    According to him, however, he is well aware that this is a sensitive topic for many survivors and promises that terrorists will not be depicted with guns in hand, but rather in handcuffs in court.

    Title image: French President Emmanuel Macron, second right, meets families after paying homage to victims of the March 15, 2012 terrorism attack after the 26th French-Spanish summit at the Montauban cemetery, southern France, Monday, March 15, 2021. French gunman Mohammed Merah killed three soldiers on March 11 and 15, 2012 in Toulouse and Montauban, before shooting three children and a teacher at a Jewish school on March 19. (AP Photo/Frederic Scheiber, Pool)

    Some French have become fatalistic about reversing terrorism in the country, claiming nothing can be done to make the “phenomenon” vanish.

    “The very fact that we are creating a memorial museum while the phenomenon of terrorism has no chance of vanishing in the years to come is a way of showing our capacity to take a step back,” said historian Henry Rousso, who oversees the project.

    “It is a form of resistance through culture, knowledge, intelligence, and the transmission of experiences,” added an expert in modern French history, who was also involved in the construction of the Normandy Landing Monument and the Shoah Monument in Paris.

    Countries such as Hungary have had security experts argue there that the lack of Islamic terrorist attacks the country experiences has to do with 

    Terrorists in a display case? A thorny issue

    The opening of the museum, which President Emmanuel Macron promised to build three years ago, is planned for 2027. The location will be decided next spring, and it is likely to be built in the Paris area.

    The exhibition will include a list of the names of all victims of terrorism in France and the French who died in attacks abroad. Researchers are already collecting suitable exhibits: messages sent by victims to their loved ones in the last moments of their lives, poems and drawings left at piety sites, documents from court trials.

    The exhibition is supposed to begin in 1974, when the Venezuelan terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, known as Carlos or Jackal, carried out an assassination in a Paris department store.

    The perpetrators will also have their place in the museum. This already raises the question of whether the authors of the project are inadvertently glorifying them.

    Henry Rousso denies this. He believes that terrorists cannot be left out of the memorial.

    “It is a history museum. When we do one on Nazism, we have to mention Himmler and Hitler,“ explained the historian.

    According to him, however, he is well aware that this is a sensitive topic for many survivors and promises that terrorists will not be depicted with guns in hand, but rather in handcuffs in court.

    Title image: French President Emmanuel Macron, second right, meets families after paying homage to victims of the March 15, 2012 terrorism attack after the 26th French-Spanish summit at the Montauban cemetery, southern France, Monday, March 15, 2021. French gunman Mohammed Merah killed three soldiers on March 11 and 15, 2012 in Toulouse and Montauban, before shooting three children and a teacher at a Jewish school on March 19. (AP Photo/Frederic Scheiber, Pool)

  • Priceless Celtic head goes on display in Olomouc museum

    An armed police intervention unit escorted one of the most precious objects of the Czech National Museum from the city of Terezín to Olomouc in the Czech Republic.

    Starting today, the Olomouc Museum of Natural History and Moravian Folk is exhibiting the unique stone sculpture depicting the head of a Celt, which is more than 2,000 years old.

    The sculpture will be placed in a special bulletproof display case.

    “The display case is extremely heavy. Even four people are not able to lift it. The safety glass is four to five centimeters thick, and the case is connected to the police,” said the museum’s director Břetislav Holásek.

    The dangerous winds that hit Czechia on Monday complicated the transport of the sculpture, with Holásek saying the bust was originally meant to be transported by helicopter, but due to the strong wind, the sculpture was transported to Olomouc by car in the end. 

    According to the National Museum, the 25-centimeter stone bust is of incalculable value. Director Holásek compares the price with the original Venus of Věstonice, which was recently also part of an exhibition in Olomouc. However, he says that there is no relevant comparison with the Celtic head.

    “Media talked about a 4-billion koruna price tag for the Celtic bust, and I could agree with that. But I think one cannot estimate the exact price. There are a few other Venuses, but if the National Museum is right, there is no other Celtic head in the world,” said Holásek.

    Lukeš added that the insurance value of the sculpture reaches tens to hundreds of millions of korunas, but it is only a number. The Celt’s head is irreplaceable, and one would not trade such a unique object for any price.

    “We lend the head very rarely,” said the director of the National Museum, Michal Lukeš, who described how unique the archaeological find was.

    In 1943, Josef Šlajrcht found the head in a sand quarry in the Central Bohemian village of Mšecké Žehrovice.

    According to historians, it is probably a sculpture of a druid.

    The Celt’s head will be displayed in the Olomouc Museum of Natural History and Moravian Folk until Feb. 23.

  • 158-year-old Budapest train station becomes museum

    Making virtue out of necessity, the 158-year-old southwestern railway station Kelenföld in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, will be converted into a museum of transportation, conservative daily Magyar Nemzet reports.

    The capital’s fourth largest railway station was built in 1861 in the typical style of 19th century Austro-Hungarian railway stations, as at the time there was only a limited number of approved blueprints depending on a settlement’s size. While based on the class one blueprint, taking into consideration its traffic, the station was already twice the size of similar stations elsewhere in the country.

    It suffered extensive damage in World War II and has remained a problematic spot for rail transport, with its last appreciable renovation made back in 1984. Finally in 2006-2007, in conjunction with the construction of Budapest’s metro line 4, which terminates there, the station received a fully functional underground building and new platforms, making the old building superfluous.

    Indeed, the platforms cannot even be accessed through the old building.

    The Budapest Transport Museum announced that it will take over management of the old station, and after its complete overhaul, it will serve as an additional location for the museum beginning in 2022.

    The railway station is linked with the larger Déli (Southern) station via a 361-meter tunnel, which has remained the only stretch of public transportation in the country with left-hand drive since the country converted to right-hand drive in July 1941.

    Title image: Kelenföld railway station (Magyar Nemzet/ Máté Bach)