AIBU to think I'm not 'goulish' for visiting Auschwitz?

[HumperdinkFangboner]

DH and I are going to Krakow early next year, with the intention of visiting Auschwitz and Birkenau. My Granddad's best friend was briefly imprisoned there during the war and he often spoke to us about it when we were children.

Mentioned it to a friend and she called me a Ghoul so I mentioned it to some other people and I get the impression that people think we're a bit odd.

Just wondering if it's in some way insensitive to visit?

Aitch - there is one particular wall that the nazis used to line the jews up against and shoot them....it is filled with wreaths/lit candles etc from family members....

And some tourists were getting their whole family to pose against this wall and taking grinning pics... I kid you not!!!

mathanxiety Sat 21-May-11 23:49:01

I think the whole point of Auschwitz is that if you're human, then you have a connection to it, both as a potential victim and as a potential perpetrator.

now that is a very interesting point. when one visits Auschwitz, how confronting is it that we all of us were more likely to have been oppressors than victims? i think that is such an interesting point to explore (although am far from convinced that it would be the right place).

i'm not saying that it does, dittany, i'm asking for some insight from the people who have been and have seen people behave in this way.

I can understand what Aitch means, I think. That those people who deny the Holocaust or don't understand the scale or the appalling level of inhumanity are the very ones who should visit but never will.

But, I do feel that visiting any of these memorials is vital - remembrance through generations.

Years ago I visited Boston which has a very moving Holocaust memorial, lists of numbers on a glass block. Two late middle aged men were looking at it at the same time and I swear this was what they said:

"Gee, look at those numbers. What do you think they were?"
"Their social security numbers."

I may have only been 20 but bloody hell I was cross.

I haven't visited a camp yet. I'm not sure I'm brave enough. My grandad was one of the soldiers who liberated Belsen and he told me about the things he saw. The pictures on my head are so upsetting I don't think I could go and see the reality.

Aitch, I went a long time ago- there were maybe three or four coachloads of people going around the first camp, no more than that, and just twenty of us at the Birkenau camp. Of those that were there, see my earlier post RE the Frenchman...

I honestly cannot imagine how it is now.

simpson, that's bizarre. I know the wall you mean and cannot fathom why anyone would do that.

Seems like it's changed a lot since I was there.

Tethersend, one and a half million people visit it a year, but they have closed off a lot of it because of the damage.

Seems like a wise idea, Milly.

Have ordered the Perec book on your recommendation, BTW.

I got chatting to a lady while I was there and she showed me a picture of her grandfather who died there (inside one of the buildings there is a wall of pictures of prisonners who died there and he was one of them) and this lady goes every yr (from Poland) on the anniversary of his death....

She was pleased that I went (someone who has no real connection to anyone who lost their life there) and tbh that is enough for me, that she was ok with it iyswim.

No I did not take any pics there....

Aitch, I think when you are right there, where murder on such a vast and coldhearted scale took place, the words from the books fall into the background and you come face to face with the absolute reality of it -- and also with the absolute fact that you are just one insignificant human being surrounded by the ashes of over a million others. Everyone would like to think they would have had the courage to do the right thing, but you look at the record, the ruins and the railways and realise that not too many people actually did.

I did. It struck me that everything was 'in colour' IYSWIM. It was a bright summer's day and birds were singing, despite myths to the contrary.

I wanted to record it.

I will go at some point. So many looked the other way and allowed it to happen. To acknowledge it seems to be the least we can do.

i have never been much troubled by the thought that i would have done the right thing, i doubt i would have. i remember getting into terrible trouble for saying that at primary school and refusing to go with the flow that we are all good people who would never do this sort of thing. (ironically enough, now that i think about it).

Humperdink - if you want to visit then I think you should. What other people think doesn't really matter. As others have said on this thread, some people show little or no respect to what happened at some of the camps. I went to Birkenau camp and I found it a very moving experience. As someone who has always had slightly off the wall political views I was very aware that someone like me could have ended up there as it wasn't just the Jews that were murdered. Some may think you are goulish, I think you should just ignore them.

Tethersend, I had a look up on line and the essay Perec wrote that I mentioned (separate to his memoir), 'The Truth of Literature' was about a book called 'The Human Race' by Robert Antelme, which was about his time in Dachau and other camps. That seems to have been so significant to so many people, so I am going to try and get hold of it.

Aitch, have you read 'Alone in Berlin' by Hans Fallada?

Slightly off topic but a really interesting portrayal of ordinary Germans' lives under the Nazis.

Oh, and before anyone asks I didn't take any photos but wrote entries in a diary instead. I did use the toilets in the visitor centre and ate my own food before stepping inside the camp. Somehow the sight of the "showers" took my appetite away...

Have you read 'Man's search for meaning' by Viktor Frankl, Milly? I mentioned it upthread but wasn't sure if you'd read it already.

Let me know if you track down the Antelme book..

no, tethers, but it sounds interesting. i haven't read much on WW2 since school, tbh, but have (partly out of interest, partly for job) watched a lot on the subject. the history of the german resistance is fascinating, for example.

jaffacake - exactly......

I have also read "Alone in berlin" and definately worth reading.....

Tethersend, no, my mum gave DS Elie Wiesel's book - Night, at Easter just before he went to the Holocaust museum, so that is what has got me started thinking about it recently. I'm going to read that first and see if I'm prepared to read another.