Interactive time-lapse map about construction of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp

The Historical Problem: The erasure of memory

After the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945, the new Polish state and remembrance groups faced the daunting task and question of: How do we remember the Holocaust and preserve the buildings tied to this human tragedy?

In a state of post-war frugality and budget limits, museum designers and archaeologists made the choice to selectively preserve the key camp structures, while letting the rest of the camps be demolished and given new uses: Outlying camp buildings became barns. Guard barracks became churches and local businesses. Evidence and memory of the concentration camps were demolished to create space for what are now industrial office parks, farmlands, and suburban neighborhoods.

Today, some of the buildings at Auschwitz-Birkenau are well preserved – specifically the gas chambers, crematoriums, and sites where mass murder happened. However, much of the surrounding region is not so well preserved or remembered. In fact, the surviving parts that millions of annual visitors now see were only a fraction of a larger complex. This larger complex included dozens of camps and thousands of buildings to support the machinery of the Holocaust. The part of Auschwitz that survives today is a singular camp of about 100 acres. But in its original form, Auschwitz was an entire camp complex with about the same surface area as contemporary Detroit or Paris.

The selective preservation vs. erasure of camp buildings – whether by intention or by natural “demolition by neglect” – reshapes the public ability to remember what happened here.

This ArcGIS StoryMap intervenes in Holocaust studies by spatially documenting the transformation of the larger region outside the crematorium’s barbed-wire fence. What is the state of preservation, decay, or remembrance for the larger complex surrounding Auschwitz-Birkenau? How can this history be better mapped and remembered?

One possible solution: ArcGIS StoryMaps

Aerial photos and georeferenced maps reveal the varying states of preservation, decay, and demolition of sites linked to the Holocaust.

During World War II, Allied pilots conducted aerial surveillance and captured aerial photographs of Auschwitz-Birkenau. These aerial images capture evidence of the Holocaust in motion: deportation trains, soldiers escorting inmates through the camps, and smoke from bodies burning in the crematoriums. These are some of the only known historical maps that survive of the Holocaust. Many of these images were later used in the trials for war crimes and are now broadly used in textbooks about the Holocaust.

These maps were declassified in 1978 by the CIA and are now – for the first time through my research – georeferenced online in a format accessible to the general public. This project georeferences about a dozen of these historic maps above contemporary satellite photos. Georeferencing reveals the camps and the region’s radical transformation in the years after the war. Georeferencing also allows readers and descendants of survivors to find the contemporary location that corresponds to the historical location in their memories.

The primary sources and historical maps behind this project are well known, and they are probably georeferenced in other places that are not accessible to the public. However, this is the only interactive map online that allows web visitors and researchers to compare the past vs. present land uses for ANY site and ANY major building within an approximately 10-mile radius of Auschwitz.

This research informs Holocaust studies and has the potential to improve the public’s understanding of how the camps operated. Today, only a fraction of the total complex is preserved, and almost all of the near-distant sub-camps whose operations supported the gas chambers and crematoriums are gone. This project uses interactive mapping to make the true scale of the architectural machinery behind the Holocaust visually and cartographically legible.

Drag the time slider < back and forth > to pan between old aerial photos and contemporary satellite imagery. Discover the current state of preservation, decay, demolition, or complete erasure of any site linked to the prison-industrial complex of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Scroll through the ArcGIS StoryMap, and see how the camp was gradually expanded from 1941 to 1945. The StoryMap’s sidecar icon gradually toggles into view each part of the camp, following the cascading order in which it was completed. This process of layering data creates – for the first time – an interactive time-based map of the camp construction before 1945 and then gradual demolition in the decades after.