Auschwitz now has its own Facebook page to raise awareness among young people – but does this trivialise an enormous tragedy?
JEZEBEL. VARIOUS cultural festivals. The JK Ensemble. These are just a handful of the things I'm a fan of on Facebook, and users of the site freely and publicly declare their fandom of everything from Maltesers to Mad Men.
Now, though, you have the chance to become a fan of Auschwitz – yes, that Auschwitz – and the move has divided opinion. Should the people who run the memorial – and understandably never want the world to forget what happened there in the 1940s – be taking such a modern step? Why not, some say, given that earlier this year, the concentration camp got its own YouTube channel. A spokesperson for the Polish museum says the reason behind the launch is to “educate the younger generation” and “what better tool can we use to reach them than the tools they use themselves?”
There is an obvious argument for educating young people about the horrors of Nazism through books and schooling, but this new route certainly looks like an instant way to reach a demographic which never seems to be offline. As much as we may admire the motivation and interactivity of it all, there’s still something downright creepy about it. The reaction has been mixed and some uncomfortable wincing is no doubt due to Facebook’s specific vernacular. Do you really want to “become a fan” of Auschwitz? Or – worse – be “poked” by what is essentially a mass grave? Given the relative ease of signing up to the social networking site, it may only be a matter of time before someone decides it’s hilarious to set up a Joseph Goebbels account and comment inappropriately (comments to the page are apparently strictly monitored). One Tweeter also pointed out that “it would be hard to ‘like’ [another Facebook tool of appreciation] anything on the Auschwitz Facebook page. It would feel wrong.”
It’s not hard to see the point of trying to raise awareness of the Holocaust. Criticism has also centred on the use of a medium such as Facebook to promote something as enormous as the loss of millions of lives. However, memorials to the dead are all over Facebook (hundreds of comments were posted on boxer Darren Sutherland’s page following his death) so this is perhaps no different, except in terms of scale. And the Jewish human rights organisation The Simon Wiesenthal Center already has 2,000 Facebook fans and is on Twitter. YouTube also has an Anne Frank memorial channel.
THE STAFF of the memorial, who made the decision to bring Auschwitz to Facebook, are aware of the mixed feeling. A discussion forum on the page has as its first topic a question about the appropriateness of its presence there.
The page was inaccessible during the week due to technical problems, but it is up and running again. The museum uses the “status update” facility to mention relevant historical events, including one this week about the number of female detainees at the camp on a particular date. The page is a mixture of poignant and morbid, of being educational and unsettling. Since launching, it has quickly amassed more than 2,000 members and it’s clear from the comments that it is already something of an online point of pilgrimage for relatives of survivors.
If a generation ignorant of Jewish genocide in the second World War learns something, then it’s got to be a good thing. But each time an opportunity flashes up on people’s Facebook profiles to “become a fan” of Auschwitz, many will guiltily decline.
