Bohdan Rymaszewski. Generations should remember

Unfortunately, very little has been written about the conservation and protection of what remains of the former camp. Most writers have been concerned with documenting the crimes, with the numbers and origins of the prisoners and the ways of commemorating them, as well as with the symbolism of Auschwitz and the education of the young, post-Auschwitz generations. The relatively few works written about conservation issues remain somewhere on the periphery.

Rymaszewski's account is a welcome addition to the literature. For many years, Rymaszewski has been interested in the preservation of the material heritage of Auschwitz, and he has been involved in important decisions concerning its conservation.

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Bohdan Rymaszewski was born in 1935, in what is currently Vilnius, Lithuania. He graduated from the Department of Conservation of Monuments, at Nicolaus Copernicus University, in Toruń, Poland.

From 1957 to 1971, he acted as City Conservator of Toruń, managing the Toruń Monument Preservation Workshop and District Museum. Between 1972 and 1983, he directed the Board of Museums and Monument Protection at the Ministry of Art and Culture, in Warsaw. For several years, he was also General Monument Conservator for Poland.

During 1984-1992, he was Chairman of the Main Board of the Monument Conservator Association and Secretary General of the Council for the Protection of Monuments and Combat and Martyrdom. He is renowned as a scientist, conservator, and museum professional. He has published more than 100 studies and articles, as well as 10 books.

For more than 30 years, he has participated, as a counselor and expert, in the work of The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim, Poland. He is the head of the Chair of History of Architecture and Monument Preservation at the Technical University, in Białystok, and he lectures at the Department of Conservation at Nicolaus Copernicus University, in Toruń.