Michael Farfan explores history in the heart of inhumanity at Auschwitz-Birkenau

By Haley Tenore

The past has always been present for Michael Farfan, from his youthful days collecting fossils, coins and military relics to his ongoing studies as a history major in the College of Humanities and Sciences at Virginia Commonwealth University. His geography, though, has varied - from Northern Virginia to Richmond and, this summer, to Poland, where his attention turned to one of humanity's darkest chapters.

Farfan served as an intern with the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, which preserves the World War II history of the Holocaust at its most infamous site: the Nazi extermination camp where more than 1.1 million men, women and children, the vast majority of them Jewish, were killed.

"Some people find the subject of the Holocaust so uncomfortable that they avoid learning about it," said Farfan, a senior. "Unfortunately, that perpetuates the spread of misinformation and denial."

Farfan, who had spent the spring semester studying in Germany, navigated his summertime language barrier with some limited Polish vocabulary. He lived in an Airbnb that once housed construction workers who built Auschwitz.

"Unfortunately, the only traces of the history of the site were the plaques installed on the side of a building," Farfan said, reflecting how Holocaust history in Europe has long been a controversial subject. "Regardless, it was interesting to live in such a historic area."

Most of his museum internship involved transcribing and logging postwar correspondence that will become the source of a new database.

"I also worked with catalog cards, which contain prisoner information," Farfan said. "My role was to sort out cards with mistakes and then put them in storage. The cards are stored in two sets of cabinets, one set for prisoner numbers and the other for last names. These cards are used as references when archivists are responding to information requests."

His setting - at Auschwitz-Birkenau and in Poland overall -­ were instructive even beyond his museum duties.

Farfan traveled to cities including Warsaw and Kraków. In the latter, "I was able to visit Oskar Schindler's enamel factory, which was very moving," he said of the museum that highlights the German industrialist who employed and saved more than 1,000 Jews.

At Auschwitz-Birkenau, Farfan attended lectures with the museum's archives and collections departments. The archives department opened in 1957, a decade after the museum itself.

"The records held there were initially used for postwar trials of Nazi perpetrators, and it is estimated that only 5% of records are preserved. The rest were destroyed or removed during the evacuation of the camp," he said. "A portion of the surviving records were taken to Moscow after the camp was liberated, and some have still not been returned to this day."

Farfan also attended a ceremony commemorating June 14, the anniversary of the first Polish prisoners to enter Auschwitz in 1940. Holocaust survivors and other ceremony participants laid candles at Block 11, the camp's main prison and torture center.

Farfan, who is minoring in business, hopes to work in a museum or in the finance industry after he graduates. He said his internship at Auschwitz-Birkenau will stay with him forever - and that everyone should try to visit the site.

"We should work to help people become more comfortable with learning about sensitive subjects such as the Holocaust," he said.

Farfan received financial support from VCU's Internship Funding Program, which is funded by a combination of VCU funds from the Strategic Enrollment Management and Student Success and the School of Business, donor funds from the Student Life and Learning Fund, and grant funds from the State Council for Higher Education of Virginia.