Peter Maria Schäfer: Spuren

Photographs about Auschwitz

Peter Maria Schäfer (*1961), photographer and filmmaker, has already created a cinematic memorial to Holocaust survivor Tadeusz Szymanski (1917-2002) through his journalistic work. Now he is dedicating a book to him with a series of impressive photographs that he has taken since the mid-1980s in the former Auschwitz extermination camp and in the city's Judengasse. Tadeusz Szymanski, who was seriously ill when he was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1941 and had therefore already been selected, survived because they wanted to use him as a living "test subject" to study the course of typhus. In 1945, he managed to escape during a transport to Buchenwald that stopped on Czech territory just before the arrival of the Soviet army. As early as 1946, Szymanski and other former prisoners became involved in the preservation of the camp complex in Auschwitz and the establishment of a memorial site there. At the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum in the 1950s, he was primarily responsible for visitor care, fought for the establishment of an international youth meeting centre and managed the collections of the camp museum until his retirement in 1977. Tadeusz Szymanski, who is regarded as a pioneer of Polish reconciliation with Germany, was honoured with the Theodor Heuss Medal in 1986.

Exhibition:
B12 August Everding Cultural Centre, Bottrop, 21/1 - 19/3/2022