"In April 2014 I was on the train from Katowice to Oswiecim (Auschwitz). On the benches next to me two teenage girls were complaining about life in Oswiecim." Do you know why I wouldn't want to live in Oswiecim? There are too many mosquitoes." The alienating shock that this almost banal comment caused to me is the basis of this report: How can Auschwitz, symbol of the ultimate evil and the center of European identity, just be a normal Polish village? "
In 'Living in Auschwitz' Thomas Van de Putte tries to find out how Auschwitz as a symbol and Oswiecim as a typical village can be united. The report tells stories of people who live in Oswiecim. How do they view the Holocaust in their village? Indifferent? Taboo? As a source of income? Or with great commitment? The report also follows a group of Belgian visitors, for whom the confrontation with Auschwitz is more cursory, but charged in a different, indirectly cultural-historical way.
