From ‘Auschwitz-land’ to Banglatown: Heritage Conflicts, Film and the Politics of Place

Abstract

‘Auschwitz-land’ is the provocative term coined by Tim Cole to describe what he sees as the reductive way in which the complex of over 43 concentration and extermination camps located on the outskirts of the Polish town of Oświęcim is now presented to tourists. ‘The tourist’s experience of “Auschwitz-land” starts at the gate proclaiming Arbeit macht frei, and ends at the reconstructed Crematorium. It is a manipulated tour which makes claims to the authentic, and yet owes much more to the constructed symbol “Auschwitz”’, which, Cole argues, has come to stand ‘as the symbol of the Holocaust’ (emphasis in original), the presentation of Auschwitz as a physical place, where specific groups of people with specific histories were abused and murdered, having been subsumed within a globally recognised ‘brand name’ (Cole 2000: 105–11).