A Beautifully Crafted Stove, a Mural of a Cat, an Endless Row of Bunk Beds
by Alison Palmer, 2024 Design & Technology Fellow
A beautifully crafted stove with gorgeous ceramic tiles.
A mural of a cat cleaning itself surrounded by hygiene products.
Orderly but endless rows of bunk beds.
I can’t seem to get them out of my mind. This imagery is embedded after visiting Auschwitz. When people have asked what it was like coming to sites of such historic violence and suffering, I struggle to formulate everything that is jumbled around in my head. I expected to see run-down structures, yet in some places there was beauty and order. It all felt deeply wrong.
Below, I have written a reflection about my time framed through drawings I made after returning from the trip.
A beautifully crafted stove with gorgeous ceramic tiles.
The stove with burnt amber tiles immediately drew me in with its color and craftsmanship. It was a stark reminder that even in such a place of horror, there were traces of pride. The tour guide informed us that Hedwig Höß, the wife of the commandant of Auschwitz Rudolf Höß, chose the tiles for the stoves. She left her touch on Auschwitz in her own way.
Walking around Auschwitz II, I kept thinking about how Nazi leaders must have visited and felt proud, felt accomplished in their efforts. Honestly, this thought fills me with fear. They thought they were doing good work, work aligned with their ethics, yet it caused an immeasurable amount of harm. This desolation represented a career achievement for them.
My head was full of questions. How do we gauge the impact of our actions? How do we know our work isn’t hurting others? How do I prevent myself and my peers from being in this position one day?
I don’t have a cut-and-dry, tried-and-true answer to these questions. The closest thing I have is a commitment to open dialogue and internal reflection. We must be able to have challenging conversations about the ethics of our work without fear of judgment or saying the wrong thing. We must encourage dissenting opinions and work through the concerns that arise. Emotional detachment, often seen as a professional virtue, can lead to overlooking potential harm. Boxing in our emotions gives us permission to ignore any misgivings we may have. We need to look within ourselves and confront our own concerns. We must be honest with ourselves.
A mural of a cat cleaning itself surrounded by hygiene products.
Out of context, this charming illustration on the back wall of a washroom in a barracks could be in any children's book. It’s a precious image. It’s a small piece of beauty and levity inside a scene of misery. It serves as a reminder of the Nazis' mastery of aesthetics and propaganda. They knew the power communication and beauty held in achieving political victory in Germany.
As a designer, I am often tasked with understanding what is appealing to a customer and using that information to craft a product for them. We frame it as fulfilling customer needs, but we don’t analyze the potential downstream effects. Since this connection occurred to me, I’ve been grappling with a question: how do we resist the urge to make something beautiful to avoid the ugliness it may cause?
Orderly but endless bunk beds.
This drawing is an abstract representation of how the tri-bunk beds were arranged in the barracks. They designed the frames at an angle such that the prisoners' heads were higher than their feet. In this way, they could fit an extra set of bunk beds in the space. This detail reveals another layer of cruelty, cruelty caused by people trying to excel at their jobs.
The Nazi planners and designers optimized with a single principle in mind: sheltering the greatest number of people possible. As professionals in design and technology, we frequently optimize for efficiency and productivity. As design and technology professionals, it is our responsibility to scrutinize what we are optimizing for and why. We have influence and must use our expertise to push back on optimization that could potentially cause harm.
Following my visit, I have wrestled with moments of empowerment and feelings of helplessness. It's clear that each of us holds some degree of influence and responsibility. Acknowledging our potential to cause harm is a crucial first step toward meaningful change. By resisting emotional detachment and embracing ethical discourses, we can begin to dismantle harmful systems and design a more conscientious future.
Alison Palmer was a 2024 FASPE Design & Technology Fellow. They are an experience designer at Ford Motor Company.