Czyim dziedzictwem są brzozy? Wokół pracy Berlin-Birkenau Łukasza Surowca

Abstract

The article discusses Łukasz Surowiec’s Berlin-Birkenau project under which the artist planted in Berlin several hundred birches from the area around the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. The goal of the work defined by the artist was to create living monuments of the Holocaust and to propose the changes in the dynamics of Polish-German relations. In the article, I propose interpreting Surowiec’s work through the symbolic role of birches in the history of Polish culture and environmental history of the Holocaust. Such interpretation reveals the ambiguity of the gesture of replanting trees, the inability to classify it as an act of giving responsibility to the Germans or Polish-German reconciliation.