AUSCHWITZ - THEN AND NOW : TOWN STRIVES FOR NORMALCY AMID ITS DARK HISTORY.

Byline: Neely Tucker Knight-Ridder Newspapers

She makes a living by working as a shop clerk in the Death Gate.

The long, narrow brick building was the entrance to the Birkenau section of the Auschwitz concentration camp complex and, in the intervening half-century, has come to symbolize the Holocaust.

She lives less than two miles away. Her house lies a few hundred yards from the remains of mass graves and the funeral pyres the Nazis built when they killed thousands more people each day than the crematoriums could burn.

Auschwitz survivor and author Primo Levi dubbed the area ``anus mundi,'' the anus of the world, and the name stuck.

Welcome to Oswiecim, Stanislawa Szymanska's hometown.

``Oswiecim is my town, but everybody knows it as Auschwitz, the factory of death,'' said Szymanska, 57. ``The town is one thing and the former camps another, but nobody, particularly outside Poland, seems to realize it.''

Perhaps not, because once again the Auschwitz Museum is at the center of an international controversy. Once again, the people of Oswiecim are being criticized as insensitive to the memory of the 1.5 million people - primarily Jews but also gypsies, political dissidents and homosexuals - who were killed at Auschwitz in the camps during World War II.

The people of Oswiecim are getting a little tired of it.

This time, a Polish-German business venture wants to tear down the grimy brick-and-tin market that stands across the street from the Auschwitz Museum and build a larger strip mall of clothing shops and food stores, with a 200-car parking lot.

The proposal has set off international protests. The Israeli Parliament has condemned it, as have the Polish president, prime minister and culture minister. The Belgium-based International Auschwitz Council is protesting, and the Polish Culture Ministry is reviewing the plan. Late last month the Polish partner in the venture, Krakchemia SA, announced it was pulling out of the deal, putting the project in jeopardy.

The upheaval carries a sadly familiar ring.

In the past few years, a Catholic convent on the Auschwitz grounds, the film ``Schindler's List,'' and the 50th anniversary of the camp's liberation have all sparked controversy. The convent closed in 1993, but only after Pope John Paul II, himself a Pole, ordered the nuns to leave.

This time, however, Oswiecim's mayor vows to continue with the project.

``I've lived here 36 years, and I know what Oswiecim's needs are,'' said Mayor Andrzej Telka. ``What people fail to realize is that the Auschwitz Museum isn't on the moon but in the middle of a busy town.''

Perhaps nowhere else would the renovation of a corner store - selling groceries and cleaning products and a few shirts and socks - call into play personal and national morality, international relations and the full sweep of 20th-century history.

But then, perhaps nowhere else bears the abnormal weight of being the black hole of this century's humanity. Hiroshima may be known as the awful dawning of the Atomic Age, but the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex is the deadliest site in the deadliest century known to history.

``Auschwitz-Birkenau is anything but a normal place, and extra sensitivities are required,'' said Rabbi Michael Schudrich, head of nonprofit Lauder Foundation in Poland. The private, U.S.-based foundation is dedicated to preserving Jewish life in eastern Europe.

``This is less a Polish-Jewish issue and more of a worldwide issue on how to maintain appropriate decorum at Auschwitz. It's difficult when the area is run by a small-town administration that may have different concerns,'' he said.

Indeed, Telka and the town he governs have an uneasy relationship with museums.

On one hand, the Auschwitz and Birkenau museums, only two miles apart, draw 500,000 visitors a year, more than half of those from outside Poland. That makes the camp complex a major tourist and pilgrimage site, regardless of the sensitivities involved.

But on the other hand, Oswiecim is an 800-year-old city. The city did not grow up around the camp, but the other way around. The word ``Auschwitz'' is simply the German word for Oswiecim.

The town grew after the war to about 50,000 people and is now a chemical-producing center. The mayor's office hands out slick economic packages to visitors, seeking western business investments.

Residents are not blind to the museums but have long become accustomed to them.

``People always ask how can I live here,'' said Jan Graff, a retired chemical engineer. His mother-in-law, involved in the Polish Resistance, died in Birkenau. He has lived in town since 1947, and he's been a part-time tour guide to Auschwitz for 18 years. ``Well, you have to remember it wasn't so easy to move around after the war. You couldn't just pick up and go. And after a while, you get used to it. You might even feel, as I do, that you have some obligation to help preserve it. And you go on with your life.''

Other, younger town residents don't feel such burdens of the past.

``I live close to the museum, but I've gotten so used to it that I don't think much about it anymore,'' said Jolanta Staszczyk, 21, a shop clerk. ``The museum is an important historical object, but it belongs to the past.''

Locals say most people who are appalled by the idea of a shopping center across the street from Auschwitz don't realize that there was always a shopping center across the street from Auschwitz.

The sticking point is that in 1977, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, with Polish government approval, established a 1,600-foot exclusion zone around Auschwitz and Birkenau. There is a fat book of regulations about what may happen within that zone.

Officials of the Auschwitz Museum say the proposed new project meets the letter of the law. But critics say a plan to draw more business to the area - or perhaps capitalize on the hundreds of thousands of visitors each year - does not encourage an air of reverence.

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Photo

Photo: Stanislawa Szymanska, 57, works in the Death Gate of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum in Poland.

Knight-Ridder Tribune Photo Service