The Engineering of Empathy: A Spatial Deconstruction of Narrative Scripting and the Commodified Gaze at Auschwitz-Birkenau

This dissertation interrogates how the physical, architectural and curatorial organisation of Auschwitz
Birkenau actively constructs historical memory for the postmemory generation. Utilising a social
constructivist paradigm and a rigorously structured autoethnographic methodology, the research 
deconstructs the site not as a static repository of atrocity, but as a manufactured epistemological 
battleground. By synthesising Henri Lefebvre’s triad of space and Michel Foucault’s disciplinary 
architecture, the analysis examines the friction between forensic evidence, the curation of victimhood 
and the relentless pressures of global heritage tourism. The study concludes that the site’s spatial 
choreography manages the profound tension between historical justice and commodified 
remembrance, ultimately producing a curated simulacrum of the past that dictates contemporary 
engagement with the Holocaust.