It was planned to present the extermination of the peoples conquered by the Germans and to highlight the fact that the German atrocities were committed on a mass scale, while steering clear of “the macabre” and using only suitable visual elements. It stressed that the killing of the Jews should be presented in a special way, and that it was necessary to cooperate with the Central Committee of Jews in Poland (Centralny Komitet Żydów w Polsce – CKŻP) to establish the number of Jewish victims, broken down by country.

The exhibition was planned to consist of three parts: a general section showing the story of prisoners in the camp, an international section devoted to the wartime situations of the countries whose citizens were deported to Auschwitz, and a third section presenting the other German concentration camps. The exhibition was to be located in 12 blocks at the site of the main camp, named here in the order suggested for visitors to follow: the history of Polish-German relations (block 15); the structure and nature of the SS origins of the concentration camps, categories of prisoners, and attitudes of the SS to the prisoners (16); life, labor and death inside and outside the camp (17 and 18); the Destruction of the Jews, officially named “The Extermination of Millions,” since it would also cover the extermination of people from other groups (4); property belonging to the Jewish victims (5 and 6); the history of the camp and the resistance movement in the camp (7); the state of a block in 1940 (8) and in 1944 (9); experiments on prisoners and the life of women in Auschwitz (10); and the interior of the “Death Block” (11). Block 11 and the adjacent courtyard were to be a mausoleum. The remaining blocks were to be placed under the protection of the countries whose citizens died in Auschwitz, or to be used to display information about other Nazi camps.

In this project, Birkenau was supposed to be transformed into a kind of cemetery-park in which it was planned to erect a mausoleum on the ruins of crematorium III. A vocational school with dormitories, in turn, was to be opened in the buildings of the so-called Lagererweiterung, erected near the main camp in 1943-1944. This school would, above all, educate the orphans of former political prisoners. The sites of the sub-camps in Rajsko, Harmęże, and Pławy would be turned into farms that would generate money for the upkeep of the Museum. 

On April 25, 1947, there was a conference in Oświęcim of officials from the (CKŻP), including the director of the Central Jewish Historical Commission (Centralna Żydowska Komisja Historyczna – CŻKH), Natan Blumental. The Jewish delegates conferred with the head of the Department of Museums and Monuments in the MkiS, Ludwik Rajewski, and Museum head Tadeusz Wąsowicz, on the role of Jewish institutions in setting up the Museum. After inspecting the plans for the exhibition, the Jewish delegates asked for blocks 4 and 10 to be put at the disposal of the CKŻP. This request was approved. The CKŻP representatives undertook to prepare one of the exhibits in block 4, with its installation entrusted to Jewish painters and sculptors from the Art Cooperative in Łódź.

The official opening of the Museum was held on June 14, 1947. Only part of the organizational work was completed by that date, and only a part of the planned exhibition was open to visitors. 

The route for visitors in the main camp ran from the “Arbeit macht Frei” gate to block 11, and from there to gas chamber and crematorium I. Along the way, visitors could see the exhibitions in block 4 (The Extermination of the Millions), 5 and 6 (the property of the murdered Jews), 7 (an exhibition of works by ex prisoner/artists Jerzy Brandhuber, Marian Kościelniak, and Tadeusz Myszkowski), 8 (the block in its 1940 state), 9 (the block in its 1944 state), and 11 (the “Death Block” and its courtyard). The exhibition was prepared by Museum employees, with the exception of the exhibition on the destruction of the Jews in block 4 which, under the agreement mentioned above, was designed by CŻKH employees and installed by Jewish artists.

A letter from Blumental to Rajewski on July 19, 1947 indicates that the Jewish representatives approved the current state of the exhibition, even though it was not yet complete, but regarded it as only temporary. Blumental described the building containing their exhibition as “the cornerstone of the Museum of Jewish Martyrdom” that, as a department of the Auschwitz Museum, would occupy one or more pavilions and present the killing of Jews from Poland and other countries in Auschwitz, and also in Bełżec, Treblinka, Chełmno, and Sobibór.

Later discussions at sessions of the Historical Commission of the State Museum in Oświęcim indicate that its members, as well, felt that the way in which the Destruction of the Jews was presented required elaboration, and they addressed repeated requests to the CŻKH to supply the needed material. The minutes of Commission meetings indicate that these requests went unanswered. Eventually, the Museum historical Commission gave up. This marked the end of cooperation with the CŻKH, and nothing ever came of the plans for a “Museum of Jewish Martyrdom” within the Oświęcim Museum structure.

In its place, the exhibition presenting the history of the martyrdom of the Jews opened in Block 27 in 1968. It should be added that the Destruction of the Jews was also commemorated at Bełżec, Treblinka, Chełmno, and Sobibór.

From the beginning, the Birkenau site became a Memorial (although the term was not used at the time). On the grounds there, visitors could see the interiors of the remaining wooden and brick blocks, and above all the ruins of the gas chambers and crematoria, and the burning pits.

More than 2 million people visited the Museum in its first 10 years. There were 170 thousand in 1947, and between 200 and 225 thousand in the years 1948-1951.The figure fell to 127 thousand in 1953. Then it rose again in the following two years, to 166 thousand and then 414 thousand.

Since the entire exhibition had not yet been completed at the time of opening, the office of the director of the Museum formed two commissions, the Historical Commission and the Artistic Commission, in July 1947. 

The first of these commissions was tasked with preparing the design for the entire exhibition at the Auschwitz I site, and the Artistic Commission was charged with developing the visual presentation. The Commissions were still functioning in 1949, but gradually lapsed into inactivity. This was a result of the fact that access to the camp records was limited; the Main Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Poland controlled the documents. From year to year, the work of the Main Commission itself was curbed. As a result, there was no work done on the history of Auschwitz, or on completing the exhibition, until the mid-1950s.

Furthermore, the attitude towards the Museum at the highest levels of government was changing. In the first half of the 1950s, the Museum received only enough funding to maintain the blocks containing the exhibition, but there was no money for the preservation of other buildings. As a result, the majority of the blocks and the Birkenau main gate were in danger of collapse, and the roof of the so-called sauna building fell moments after a group of visitors went outside.

The kitchen building at the main camp was also in danger of collapse. Many blocks and crematorium I fell into ruin as a result of a lack of basic maintenance. At the same time, the government liquidated the carpentry-machinist workshops, which repaired museum objects.

At the turn of the 1940s and 1950s, there was a proposal to limit the Museum to a single row of blocks, and adapt the other buildings as housing. With such an attitude on the part of the government, it is therefore hardly surprising that projects at the Museum ran into obstacles, and that completion was continually postponed.

These examples suggest that the government was more interested in limiting the activities of the Museum, or even liquidating the Museum, than in fostering its development. The rebuilding of the chemical plant in Oświęcim was then beginning, and this caused an influx of new workers who needed somewhere to live. This is presumably the reason for the proposal to limit the Museum to a single row of blocks while using the rest as housing. It might further be assumed that the decision-makers of the day found it difficult to accept that many of the Museum buildings were standing there “unproductively.”

Because of problems with premises and financing, there were difficulties founding and developing the archives and library, carrying out research and publishing work, or preparing exhibitions. Only in 1955, thanks to the determination of Museum staff, was the exhibition in the main camp completed, thus forming the exhibition that, with minor changes, exists to this day (2008).

1957 saw the publication of the first scholarly studies in the periodical titled Zeszyty Oświęcimskie (Auschwitz Review). The only publications before then were a Museum guidebook, a fold-out photograph set, and an album with reproductions of paintings by former prisoner Janina Tollik. 

Only in the 1960s were the so-called national exhibitions opened and the monument at the Birkenau site unveiled, although they had been planned before the opening of the Museum. A small monument to the martyrdom of the Jews was unveiled in 1948, and an equally small monument to the victims of the camp in 1955. At the beginning of the 1960s, the boundaries of the Museum were still being demarcated, and the former owners of the ground on which it stood were in the process of being formally dispossessed and compensated.

It is worth mentioning that the office of the director of the Museum initiated a press discussion in mid-1947 by inviting journalists, former prisoners, and visitors to present their opinions about the institution. The Historical Commission was supposed to use these opinions in its work.

The participants in this discussion brought up the idea of moving the center of gravity of the Museum from the main camp to the Birkenau site, and also the question of whether the original camp buildings should be conserved or reconstructed. However, the functions of the new Museum and the message it should convey dominated the discussion. There were suggestions that it should be both a Museum and a place for the commemoration of the victims simultaneously.

In their opinion, the task of the museum part should be to convey knowledge about the camp against the background of Polish-German relations, with particular emphasis on the German policy of expansion and the Polish resistance to it. They therefore felt that the Museum should stress the resistance movement in the camp as a part of the overall struggle against the Germans, while placing less emphasis on the sufferings of the victim.

A year later, articles by Jerzy Putrament and Kazimierz Koźniewski sparked a new controversy. Both authors suggested limiting the functioning of the Museum, and the second of them even proposed that it be “torn down and plowed under.”

It is difficult at present to identify the reasons for the publication of these texts. It is possible that they reflected the changing attitudes of part of a society that was fatigued by the constant recalling of the war and the suffering of Poles—and thus, the very issues that the Museum dealt with.

It is also possible that the authors were expressing opinions held by certain members of the communist leadership, who intended to liquidate or at least severely limit the functioning of the Museum and to use its grounds and buildings for industrial, agricultural, and housing purposes.

The suggestions made in the two articles, and especially Koźniewski’s proposal to “tear [the Museum] down and plow it under,” won the support of some readers, although this support was usually expressed in anonymous letters. On the other hand, these views also met with emphatic rejection, especially from ex-prisoners.