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?

I think you should definitely go. I went as part of college trip to Poland 20 years ago and I still think about it from time to time....and usually end up crying. I thought it would be like visiting a museum, but it isn't. Standing next to the crematorium, looking at empty Zyclon B gas cylinders, seeing blankets made from human hair.....NOTHING can prepare you for how that feels. And then there are the stories the guides tell you.

I know this sounds like an awful experience and in some ways it was, but I think it is something you need to see, something everyone should see. Hard to put into words why really, but partly to remember/respect those that were there, partly to remind yourself you are a human being, I dunno, hard to say. But even though I was a very naive 17 year old, and found it really hard to be there, I am still glad I went.

I went to Dachau about 10 years ago when I was in Munich for work. I went with a collegue that I knew fairly well, but not very well. For both of us it was a deeply moving and humbling experience. Did not say a word to each other for 4 hours.

I came back convinced everyone should go, lest we ever forget. Once you have been there, you can never condone any form of racism or predjudice agian, which is why we should encourage our children to go and see what intolerance and fear can become.

It made me understand the true potential humans have for good, evil and redemption. No book or history lesson can ever really communicate that with such power.

Tee, I don't get your point. The Holocaust was the human rights violation - the International Declaration of Human Rights was created in response to it. It is bizarre to try and separate the two concepts.

I think it is people going there to feel the 'horror' of the place that I don't get. I read George Perec's 'the Truth of Literature' about the impossibility of getting people to understand the Holocaust because they just respond with shock or horror to the scale and depravity of it. I then read his memoir - Double V - the memory of Childhood, and I felt that I could empathise with him as a human being and understand, through his own words, what it actually felt like to be there.

I think standing looking at human hair and children's belongings in piles would just horrify me so much that it would be impossible to imagine, empathise, or feel something for an individual human being.

I suspect we all respond differently, and want to remember differently.

I studied the Holocaust literature at University, and read extra on the subject because I discovered Primo Levi, and got into his work. The thing that comes up time and again in survivor testimony is that the camps felt like they were outside the world, and no-one knew or cared where they were. So it feels to me like remembering is a particularly charged act in respect of the Holocaust...and many survivors actively engage in educating others on what happened. Of course there are other horrific example of genocide, and it's true we don't all feel the need to visit those sites / areas in the way that many are compelled to visit the camps...but I think there is something about the systematic, long term method of the Nazis, the fact it happened so close to us geographically, and interestingly a few people I know who have been have said that visiting the camps made it feel closer in time - my tutor at Uni recalled how shocked she felt to see solid brick buildings at Auschwitz, modern buildings, more recently built than the one we were in at that time. It wasn't that long ago, and she found that jarring.

I don't think it necessarily matters that the people who should go, don't. I think it matters that people do go, irrespective of motivation, despite what people think, and can witness what will still be there when all the survivors are gone.

gah. see, the way some of you describe it, it sounds so shocking but also, dare i say, a little thrill-y? there is something in humans that likes to be scared in a safe environment, are you sure that there is nothing of that? all of you keep saying that words can't describe the feeling, but it sounds a little bit like an extreme emotional reaction that is slightly exhilirating. cannot stress HOW LITTLE i want to offend anyone with that, but it is a fact that misery lit sells to more people than admit to buying it, so there is some sort of attraction there... oh god please do not jump on me because i KNOW that i am not expressing that exactly the way i wanted to.

i think milly is closer t what i might be trying to say than i am.

I also read a whole article many years ago about one of the US museums - like someone on here said, they got a paper with a particular individual's details on. They were also put in cattle trains in part of the museum. The writer said that he found it like being in a theme park, and what he found most distressing was that all around the museum there are discarded papers of individual holocaust victims, that people have thrown away on their way out of the museum.

PumpkinBones YY.

I think what makes this particularly significant in comparison to the horrific events, say, in Rwanda in more recent times - is the fact that this was in Europe. This was SO close to home, in what was universally accepted to be a 'civilised' part of the world - and yet something so appalling that it can't even be put into words happened.

Absolutely right to go. I haven't been, but would go if I had the chance-I think that everyone should go, to ensure it is never forgotten.

Milly, to pick up on your earlier point- I agree that to compel people to visit the camps under force would be to spectacularly ignore any lesson to be learned from their continued existence- but I do not think it follows that anyone who has suffered serious psychological trauma should automatically not go to visit them. Although I don't think that's what you meant.

I suppose I mean that there may be 'value' in going that is not apparent until you've been.

Viktor Frankl's book 'Man's search for meaning' explores a lot of the issues raised on this thread. He was a psychologist imprisoned in concentration camps- a very interesting read.

Will definitely read Perec's memoir.

I think there is certainly value in going for some people. My mother went to the Holocaust memorial in Israel, and found it worthwhile, but then she has a very high tolerance for tales of human misery. I am always asking her to stop telling me something half way through a conversation.

My neighbour who went and was traumatised probably should have gone, because he seems to have rethought his frequent casual prejudices.

DS went to the memorial museum in the UK with the school, and his guide was a survivor of the camps, but it did not have a great impact. He then did an Amnesty International project with school, was greatly moved by a video on homosexuality in Iran, and wants to join an Amnesty campaign.

I think different people respond differently, and there is no one right way. I certainly wouldn't want it demolished. There is something quite traumatic about knowing it stands there and many of us couldn't bring ourselves to go in.

op, if you want to go you should go

I couldn't. I just couldn't face it

FIL was one of the soldiers who liberated Belsen Belsen, awful experience

just unbearably sad

I haven't been to Auschwitz, but have been to other similar places (Mauthausen, Killing Fields), and whilst it's definitely not something you enjoy, I found it deeply humbling, and a massive learning experience. It's that whole 'lest we forget' thing, and with people who lived through these atrocities dying out, how else can we ensure that people really know about these awful events? So, yes, I'd say you should go, but be prepared to be upset, and definitely affected by it.

I haven't been to Krakow but have been to other concentration camps and found them incredibly moving and humbling - we may know what went on there but visiting actually brings it home much more than any film/photographs/written account can. YADNBU being ghoulish, they are a very important part of our history and will certainly make you think and reflect.

I have been. It is a deeply moving experience hard to describe until you have been. We went to Auschwitz and Birkenau. There were parts I found too difficult to see, some parts where there were tears but it was an experience I shall not forget. Be warned it leaves you feeling absolutely exhausted. You should go - in fact I think its important to do so.

when i was about 7 years old my parents took me to ypres in belguim it was a small place then, and in a little wooden hut were pictures taken at belsen and they set in me a lifelong interest in the holocaust as i got older i always said i wanted to go to austwich, went to krakow last year and finally did visit, until you go there you cannot understand the sheer cold bloodidness of the nazi killing machine, how vast the camp is, how long the train tracks are that brought the trains in, how close the first gas chambers are to the tracks, after selection life was 200yds from death, and in the bathhouse row upon row of photographs of whole families gypsies, etc who perished there, and those who say demolish and build on the land huge parts of the camp are mass graves respect is the only emotion you can feel for all those people who suffered and died there and in other camps i am glad i went

Aitch, before I went to Auschwitz, I knew about the Holocaust. When I went to Auschwitz, I saw the Holocaust, or rather, I was able to visualise what those poor people had gone through. The guide who showed us around was brilliant and she spoke about that time with such feeling and you could sense the anger in her voice.

Also, the displays of people's suitcases, with their names on, their shoes, their combs, I found it overwhelming and cried more than once on the way round. I suppose there are people who don't need to see all that to know what went on but it did make it much more real for me.

Go if you feel like it.It's very touching.School taught me WWII history.They showed me the literature.It's very hard when you think how many people lost their lives in such conditions.I have read a lot but I'd be scared to go there.
If I go ther I'd be crying for all these people.
Krakow-beautiful citie,one of the oldest in Poland(used to be a capital) with lovely castle and loads of attractions-try to get a trip to salt mines Wieliczka-it's really worth it

city of course

I think I must be really weird because I visited one concentration camp (not Auschwitz) and it didn't affect me much more. I mean, I was affected, but I had already studied it at school and university, read witness statements, Nazi propaganda, etc. I think I already comprehended the potential evil of humankind. The concentration didn't particularly bring it home to me any more.

I think there is sometimes something ghoulish in people's desire to visit these places. As someone else said, to be scared in a safe place is quite a common wish.

I'm not sure that encouraging people to visit these places will guard against such atrocities happening in the future. The atrocities will probably just take a different form, one that we won't become sensitive to until it's too late...

chip, but what did making it all much more real for you actually achieve? i wonder if that's what i am getting at... what difference does it actually make? the people who might benefit wouldn't go.
seeing the graves in normandy improved my understanding of the scale of the battles etc, but i still ate my lunch. and going to a concentration camp is so, so much more than a graveyard, it's one whole enormous grave, a holy site. does it actually honour the people who died there by trampling on it? does it increase your remembrance of them, and if so, to what actual end?

still mulling, btw. as you can probably tell i am completely at a loss on this one.

No way are you ghoulish. Go and remember those who died. How is it ghoulish to pay respects??? Why are you even asking this????

Justfeckindoiit said

I came back convinced everyone should go, lest we ever forget. Once you have been there, you can never condone any form of racism or predjudice agian, which is why we should encourage our children to go and see what intolerance and fear can become.

I hope you go in that spirit and come back and bear witness.

I wouldn't go, but if I did I would feel even more beholden to the victims to NEVER let any prejudice pass.

What are you saying to friends that they then accuse you of ghoulishness? Perhaps you are presenting it glibbly.