Unprecedented work at Auschwitz to preserve Holocaust site

Oswiecim : Brick by brick, plank by plank, workers at the former Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau carefully clean its barracks to preserve the Holocaust symbol for future generations. 

"This is the largest preservation project in the history of the museum at Auschwitz-Birkenau. It's unprecedented," museum spokesman Pawel Sawicki told AFP. 

Along with the ruins of the gas chambers and crematoria, the barracks bear witness to Nazi Germany's killing of around 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, at this camp, which it built in 1940 in the southern city of Oswiecim after occupying Poland.  

"Preserving a barrack requires a completely different approach than one used to preserve a church for example. There, the goal is to return the building to its original state, so its most beautiful state," says site manager Ewa Cyrulik. 

"Here, the goal is to leave everything unchanged. The biggest compliment for us is when someone says they can't really see a difference afterwards," she tells AFP. 

The task is all the harder because these types of poorly constructed barracks have never been preserved before, according to the Auschwitz team.

"My colleagues in the building industry laughed when I told them what I was doing. They said it'd be easier to just tear down the wall and rebuild it brick by brick than to restore it the way we're doing," says Szymon Jancia, a construction expert at the site. 

"We're aware that people come here specifically to see authentic objects and buildings," Cyrulik adds for her part.

Protected from the weather by tents 12 metres (39 feet) high, the two barracks under restoration number among the camp's oldest.

Work on the barracks began in September 2015 and will continue for another couple of years, while the entire project will take more than a decade and cost millions of dollars.