Dr. Robert Jan van Pelt, a professor in the School of Architecture, is renowned for his research into the architecture and design of the Nazi concentration camps and gas chambers.
His research became public when he took the stand as the key expert witness in a notorious British libel trial that pitted British Holocaust denier David Irving against American historian Deborah Lipstadt. His testimony, portrayed in the 2016 film Denial, was a key factor in the verdict clearing Lipstadt of the claim of libel.
In 2013, van Pelt received an email from Luis Ferreiro Aguirre, director of Musealia, a company that specializes in creating exhibitions and taking them around the world. Aguirre wanted to create a travelling exhibition about the history of Auschwitz and needed an expert on the subject to help him. Excited by Aguirre's proposal, van Pelt joined the project as chief curator and together they launched Auschwitz: Not long ago. Not far away., one of the most comprehensive exhibitions ever presented on the subject is now on view at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto.
Dr. Robert Jan van Pelt at the ROM. Image credit: Fred Hunsberger
Van Pelt joined the University of Waterloo in 1987 and describes his introduction to the School as "love at first sight."
"I had worked at several institutions, but Waterloo was the first that was ready for me," van Pelt says. "The school was incredibly supportive of me and my research from the moment I walked in the doors and has remained so, I have spent my entire career here as a result."
At that time, Auschwitz was still behind the iron curtain and while there was considerable scholarship, the architectural perspective of the camp's construction had not been fully explored.
This became an increasingly important topic in the 1980s as Holocaust deniers began to argue that a close study of the architectural evidence of the site would refute the feasibility of the scale of the atrocities that took place in the camps.
In 2016, van Pelt collaborated with students and faculty from Waterloo's School of Architecture for his Venice Biennale of Architecture exhibition The Evidence Room. Several objects from this collection appear in Auschwitz: Not long ago. Not far away.
The first object visitors encounter at the exhibition. Image credit: Musealia
Speaking of the exhibition, van Pelt shares that the first object you encounter is a single, red, women's dress shoe, encased in glass in the centre of the room. The wall just behind displays an image of the same shoe atop hundreds of discarded shoes, accompanied by Moshe Szulsztein's poem We are the Shoes.
The shoe, one of the more than 500 original objects on loan from the Auschwitz Memorial and more than 20 other institutions and private collections worldwide, is the first of many throughout the different stages of the exhibition.
"In the very beginning I was interested in creating an exhibition in which we would build up in the mind of the visitor a memory structure," van Pelt says. "Clearly laying out through stories, where is Auschwitz, what is this place and then to slowly start building up a story that at key moments, touches back on that location."
Architectural model of Auschwitz by Dr. Robert Jan van Pelt and Waterloo graduates Piper Bernbaum, Anna Longrigg, Michael Nugent, Madeleine Reinhart and Tristan Van Leur. Image credit: Musealia
Physical objects and archival records provide a comprehensive look at the political and social landscape of Europe between the wars, methodically developing the dual narratives of the place Auschwitz and the rise of Nazism, how the fates of both intertwine, and of the intellectual and human factors that enabled such systemic atrocities.
The exhibition first opened in Madrid in 2017 and has toured to New York, Kansas City, the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley California, Malmo, Sweden and Boston. An estimated 1.5 to 2 million attendees have visited the exhibition to date.
An excerpt from a poem by Auschwitz survivor Charlotte Delbo closes the exhibition and provides the central message:
"You who are passing by
I beg you
do something
learn a dance step
something to justify your existence
something that gives you the right
to be dressed in your skin in your body hair
learn to walk and to laugh
because it would be too senseless after all
for so many to have died
while you live
doing nothing with your life."
On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops entered the camp at Auschwitz as they advanced toward Berlin. This date marks the liberation of the 7,600 survivors of Auschwitz's three main camps and is now internationally recognized as Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Auschwitz: Not long ago. Not far away. is on view at the ROM until September 1.
