Teresa Swiebocka, Deputy Director
Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum
Poland
Dear Ms. Swiebocka,
I am writing in support of Dina Gottliebova Babbitt’s attempt to recover her paintings that you have in your museum. I hope that you will reconsider your refusal to give them up.
I understand that the paintings depicting Gypsy prisoners are very important to your museum, and they play a part in the telling of a story that needs to be told and seen. Couldn’t you, though, display reproductions of the paintings and reunite the originals with their creator? Viewing these images is surely a part of the healing process for the visitors to your museum. It seems that the healing process for Dina Babbitt, however, is incomplete while she is separated from this part of her past.
On the one hand I wonder whether it might be healing for her to let the artwork go, to give it to the world and perhaps thus free herself some from the horrific experience she went through. I can not, however, fathom what her relationship is to her past experience, and I feel that her desire to be at last in control of these objects should be honored.
Truly,
Liz Mann
