Gerhard Richter’s "Birkenau" at Auschwitz:

Since 2024, visitors to the International Youth Meeting Centre (IYMC) in Oświęcim have been able to visit a pavilion located within its grounds that houses an installation of artworks by Gerhard Richter. This installation consists of a photographic edition of four painterly works collectively entitled Birkenau (2014), prints of four clandestine photographs taken in Auschwitz by members of the Sonderkommando in 1944, and a long, dark mirror reflecting both visitors and the artworks inside. The Gerhard Richter BIRKENAU pavilion was designed by Richter and his wife, Sabine Moritz-Richter, with input from other artists and architects. My text examines how the artist engages with the four visual testimonies from Auschwitz, both within this edition of the Birkenau cycle and throughout the entire pavilion in Oświęcim. My reflections oscillate between three points of reference considering the discourses of representation, memory and imagination after the Holocaust, embodied in the texts of B.H.D. Buchloh, G. Didi-Huberman and D. Głowacka.