In the recently concluded 14th edition of the Society of Polish Town Planners' competition for the best urban and architectural projects in Poland, the prize in the category of Public Space in Greenery went to the Great Synagogue Memorial Park in Oswiecim. Its initiator is the Oswiecim Jewish Center, and the project could be created thanks to the involvement of many people and institutions and an online collection.
The award-winning project by NArchitekTURA - Bartosz Haduch in cooperation with Imaginga Studio is a pocket park that was created on the site of the largest synagogue in pre-war Oświęcim, built in the late 1860s and early 1870s on the site of a former synagogue. It was burned to the ground on the night of November 29-30, 1939 by the Nazis, and two years later the burnt area was demolished. The Great Synagogue Memorial Park not only commemorates the now-defunct site and the trauma of the Holocaust associated with the former Auschwitz concentration camp, but also refers to a reminder of the city's multicultural face. For several centuries Auschwitz was a place where Christians and Jews coexisted together, and the latter made up as much as 60 percent of the population before the outbreak of World War II. There were more than 20 synagogues and houses of prayer in the city, but social and religious life was mainly concentrated around the Great Synagogue.
View of the Great Synagogue Memorial Park in Oswiecim
photo by Piotr Strycharski
universal symbolism
In the justification of the competition jury, which consisted of representatives of the Board of Directors of the Society of Polish Town Planners, the Presidents of the Field Branches of the Society of Polish Town Planners, the President of the Chamber of Architects of the Republic of Poland, Małgorzata Pilinkiewicz, and the President of the Association of Polish Architects, Bohdan Lisowski, we read that:
The award was given for the realization of the pocket Memorial Park, whose universal symbolism reflects different cultures and religions. The park is located in the center of Oświęcim and its open form allows for different ways of use, commemoration of history and interpretation of the space. The Competition Jury appreciated the going "path of life" with a unique material solution and emphasized the symbolic dimension of the park without a clear "beginning and end." A place was created that is now a place of rest and quiet recreation among the greenery, but at the same time a space for reflection on the multicultural heritage of the city near Auschwitz.
Memorial Park of the Great Synagogue in Oswiecim
photo by Piotr Strycharski
"restoration to life"
The architects treated this project as a continuation and development of their earlier realization of the interior design and permanent exhibition of the Jewish Center, linking it to Jewish tradition, but also to universal symbolism, legible within different faiths or cultures. The space has an open character, and references to the former synagogue here take on non-obvious forms.
The open space of the Great Synagogue Memorial Park in Oswiecim
photo by Piotr Strycharski
Theoutline of the synagogue's projection is marked by a narrow curb, separating the interior of the park from the surrounding greenery, and the main element of the development is a mosaic of forty slabs of gray sandstone, referring to the remains of the building, as its floor was made of a similar material. The slabs lead to a display depicting the history of the synagogue, a "well" with a historical floor, a water pond, benches made of corten sheet metal and a chandelier , which is a copy of an object found at the site during archaeological work. The "paths of life," on the other hand, are 120×220 cm modules of gray sandstone, which are industrial waste. They are decorated with a type of relief that was not the architects' idea, but the result of their use in the quarry, where they served as bases for cutting smaller formats. The reuse of this industrial waste is a gesture against the overexploitation of natural resources, a kind of "restoration," which can also be taken symbolically as a restoration of the synagogue's memory, history and the city's multiculturalism.
Grey sandstone slabs and a display at the Great Synagogue Memorial Park in Oswiecim
photo by Piotr Strycharski
minimalism and open form
It is characteristic of the Memorial Park that architectural intervention gives way to nature, gradually appropriating the place. Decades-old trees - lindens, maples, elm and ash - have been preserved in the park, and new plants have appeared.
View of the pond in the Great Synagogue Memorial Park in Oswiecim
photo by Piotr Strycharski
The origins of this idea of no or minimal intervention, minimalism and open character can be traced back to Oskar Hansen's concept of open form and his unrealized 1958 memorial The Road , which was intended to commemorate the victims of fascism at Auschwitz Birkenau. Hansen's design consisted of building an asphalt road across the site of the former camp and allowing it to overgrow and deteriorate on its own, succumbing to material as well as symbolic entropy. One can also see in the NArchitekTURA concept references to the best solutions of Holocaust memorials, such as the Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin by Peter Eisenman, created between 2003 and 2005, consisting of 2711 concrete block-stelae, thus one for each side of the Talmud and arranged in parallel rows.
