Strolling down a cobbled street on a crisp January afternoon, kindergarten head teacher Zuzanna Korzeniowska is in a chirpy mood.
‘It’s perfectly nice and normal here,’ she says, describing her quaint and picturesque hometown.
‘A bit small, but it is pretty. We are normal, friendly people who try to be happy.’
She then adds: ‘Despite what happened.’
Across the road, Piotr Kozłowski and his wife Agnieszka are finishing their shopping at a local market.
Holding bags of bananas, tomatoes and stewed cabbage, Piotr tells MailOnline: ‘It’s impossible to keep thinking about the fact that such terrible things happened here.’
‘Obviously we know about it, but we try not to let it affect our normal everyday life.’
‘We run our own company and we get on with our lives. This is our home,’ his wife adds.
Cafe Bergson was the former home of Oświęcim’s last Jewish resident, Szymon Kluger
During the war the Nazis established an admin office adorned with swastikas which is now a bank
A WWII photo of German soldiers crossing the Piastowski bridge, and a street with a swastika hanging out of a window in front of the town’s main church, next to an image of the bridge today
WWII photo Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Marin in Oświęcim compared to what it looks lie today
This ‘home’ is the small town of Oświęcim, nestled alongside the River Sola in southern Poland.
With a history dating back to the 12th century, today the local council’s website describes it as ‘a city of peace’.
But for the rest of the world, the town is synonymous with one thing – the Nazi death camp Auschwitz.
Following Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939 and the outbreak of WWII, the Nazis immediately Germanised the name of the town to Auschwitz.
The concentration camp was established a year later.
PiastowskiInitially intended for criminals and political prisoners, it soon became central to the Nazi’s diabolical Holocaust plan for mass extermination.
By the time the camp was liberated on Jan 27, 1945, over 1 million people, mainly Jews, had been murdered in gas chambers, brutal medical experiments, executions, torture chambers, or through starvation.
With Monday seeing the 80th anniversary of the camp’s liberation, the town’s authorities are now gearing up for the arrival of politicians, dignitaries, statesmen and women, and even King Charles III.
Stepping into a patch of sunlight, market shopper Piotr says: ‘We live close to the camp so, unfortunately, we feel the impact of history every day, but mainly because of the tourists visiting the museum, who park their cars anywhere and everywhere without paying attention to the fact that people also live here.
‘During ceremonies and commemorations, like on Monday, we also have difficulties because the streets are closed and the army, police and secret services are everywhere.’
Historic photo of the Grand Hotel which has now been transformed into a printing house
A then-and-now image of an Auschwitz train station
The small town of Oświęcim, nestled alongside the River Sola in southern Poland is synonymous with one thing – the Nazi death camp Auschwitz. Pictured: Market square with Nazis in 1939
On the town’s market square, a temporary exhibition named ‘Faces of Help’ has been set up in memory of locals who risks their lives to help Auschwitz inmates
Kindergarten head Zuzanna also isn’t happy. ‘Although I don’t constantly think about the fact that there was a concentration camp here, its impact is present in our everyday life,’ she says.
‘For example by having to pay to park our cars like tourists.’
A few hundred meters away from the market stall sits Cafe Bergson, where barista Kamil Gut is serving up cappuccinos and flat whites.
‘It’s important these people come,’ he tells MailOnline.
‘I would like people’s memory of what the Germans did here never to be lost, to know about it and to make sure that such a great tragedy never happens again.’
Currently preparing to take an exam to become a guide at the Auschwitz Museum, the 30-year-old continues: ‘The camp and its history had a great impact on my life.
‘When I was young, my grandmother, who was a child at the time, used to tell me about what happened in Auschwitz during the occupation.
‘I visited the camp for the first time when I was in secondary school with a group of friends who were interested in history.
‘It changed my life, I started to explore its history and all the terrible things the Germans did to people there.
‘During my studies at university, where I studied English, I did an internship at the museum.
‘It was a very profound experience because we also worked with the exhibits that are on display.
‘When, for example, I was handling the shoes of the victims for conservation, the feeling of touching the belongings of people whose lives were so terribly destroyed had a profound effect on my whole life.’
‘That’s why I’m working here,’ he says.
Kamil’s Cafe Bergson was the former home of Oświęcim’s last Jewish resident, Szymon Kluger.
Piotr Kozłowski and his wife Agnieszka told the MailOnline: ‘It’s impossible to keep thinking about the fact that such terrible things happened here’
Kamil Guts Cafe Bergson was the former home of Oświęcim’s last Jewish resident, Szymon Kluger
High school student Marcelina Kowalska and her friend Julia
Just 14-years-old when the war broke out, Kluger saw the Nazis burn the town’s Great Synagogue to the ground and witnessed the gradual liquidation of the then 8,000-strong Jewish population.
Captured by the Nazis in 1941 along with his eight brothers and sisters, he was first sent to an Auschwitz sub camp before being herded off to the concentration camps of Buchenwald in Germany and later Gross Rosen, in what is now the Polish village of Rogoźnica.
Managing to survive the Holocaust, in 1962 Kluger decided to return to the family home in Oświęcim.
‘He stayed there until his death in May 2000, when his surviving brother and sister decided to donate the house to the Auschwitz Jewish Center,’ says Kamil.
‘This is an important cafe.’
On the town’s market square, a temporary exhibition named ‘Faces of Help’ has been set up in memory of locals who risks their lives to help Auschwitz inmates.
Wanting to underline that the town’s population wasn’t indifferent to the mass annihilation and atrocities talking place, the exhibition highlights how locals smuggled food, medicine and secret messages to the prisoners.
‘It is good that the history of all these people is known not only in Oświęcim or Poland, but also abroad.
‘Foreigners often ask what we were doing here in the face of the tragedy of Auschwitz,’ says local woman Zofia Piwowarczyk.
Meanwhile, in a nearby cafe a man supping tea and reading the local newspaper tells his girlfriend: ‘Police have arrested a doctor in A&E for being drunk on duty.
‘He should be shot for putting people’s lives in danger like that.’
‘We’re getting five more electric buses though.’
Across the road, high school student Marcelina Kowalska is going to meet some friends next to a bank where during the war the Nazis established an admin office adorned with swastikas.
Getting out of her car the 18-year-old says: ‘On a day-to-day basis the history doesn’t really affect my life or the lives of my friends.
The Muzea Malopolski’s cafe in Poland
‘We try not to think about it, we try to have an ordinary normal life, meet with friends, party, enjoy life.
‘You can’t keep thinking about what happened here during the war because we’d all go crazy.’
Looking at a WWII photo of German soldiers crossing the nearby Piastowski bridge, and a street with a swastika hanging out of a window in front of the town’s main church, her friend Julia says: ‘I often cross that bridge to see friends.
‘The bus takes me past the camp and, yeah, sometimes something changes in me, sadness and thoughtfulness come over me.
‘And of course I’ve been to that church. It’s normal.
‘But we don’t really think about what happened in the past on a daily basis.
‘We have our own joys and sorrows, our own issues that we deal with.’
‘Oświęcim isn’t some black hole at the end of the world,’ says Tomasz Kuncewicz, the director of the Auschwitz Jewish Center.
‘Before the Nazis came, this was a normal, small town in the middle of Europe, so it’s important to visit the actual town to understand this and see that genocide can happen anywhere’.
Jakub, a 23-year-old waiter at the hotel Hampton by Hilton in Oświęcim has worked there three years.
‘When you are born in the city of Oświęcim, the camp is here. I was born and it was here. So it doesn’t affect you as much as the people abroad.
When you pass the thing over and over, when you go to school or to a different city, it starts to lower the impact of what was done.
You are so close to it that you [don’t appreciate it].
It might be different for people from older generations.
I know that my city is only known because of the camp. There is nothing else. We have one of the largest companies in Poland based here, but still it is only defined by the camp.
Everyone knows Auschwitz, but very few people know it is actually Oswiecim. People from Poland, of course. But very few people from abroad.
For us, the city is like a dead city. This is just the Auschwitz camp, there is nothing else.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
