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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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

307 replies

HumperdinkFangboner · 20/05/2011 19:34

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?

OP posts:
CheerfulYank · 21/05/2011 06:46

I don't think you are being ghoulish at all! At this point in my life, I could not go, but I don't think anyone is BU to want to.

When I was 14 or so Auschwitz was all over the news (not sure why, an anniversary or something? This would have been '96?) and that was the first I'd really learned about everything that went on there. I woke up screaming the house down every night for almost three weeks. I still can't fathom it. It's worse now that I have DS; I can't imagine the feeling of not being able to help your children. It makes me sick. I did go to the Holocaust museum in Washington DC for a school trip and I remember the piles of shoes. :(

Sorry to digress. No, YANBU or a ghoul.

exoticfruits · 21/05/2011 07:40

I would agree with Thruaglassdarkly. If you thought it was ghoulish you would avoid everything to do with death-and I don't think it should be a taboo subject-it should all be out in the open, including concentration camps. The only other way is to pretend it never happened.

exoticfruits · 21/05/2011 07:43

You can learn about these things from books and films but you don't really appreciate it until you see it. DCs learnt about WW1 at school, but school visits to French war graves made it 'real'. This was not ghoulish either.

AitchTwoOh · 21/05/2011 08:09

i genuinely don't understand how it is unreal without having seen it. it was/is real.
i will probably never see the taj mahal but it doesn't make it any less real. hmm, i really don't understand this. not many people answered my post re the feelings experienced there, unfortunately, it's still something people cannot or will not describe.

bumpsoon · 21/05/2011 08:14

My parents went to Krakow last year and my father went to Aushwitz , my mother chose not to as she knew it would have a profound effect on her . I personally wouldnt want to go ,simply beacause i know how much it would disturb me , that doesnt mean that i think that others shouldnt visit , especially anyone with an interest in social history . So OP you are being ghoulish if you go

WeirdAcronymNotKnown · 21/05/2011 08:15

Aitch - I'm not offended, I know what you mean. As I've said, I dont doubt that some would go for the 'scared in a safe environment' feeling.

But, maybe they would go for that feeling, but when they got there they would actually learn from it and be humbled and remember that it doesn't just exist to thrill us?

In which case, I don't think it really matters what the original reason for going is - surely what matters is the end result?

bumpsoon · 21/05/2011 08:15

Ooooops NOT being ghoulish

exoticfruits · 21/05/2011 08:21

I'm sure that seeing the taj mahal is very different to seeing a photo.

lubberlich · 21/05/2011 08:22

A friend of mine who is now 93 was in Auschwitz as a child. She still has the number tattoo on her wrist. She lost her entire family in the holocaust.

She would tell you that EVERYBODY should go and face up to what humankind is capable of.
No of course you are not being ghoulish.

AitchTwoOh · 21/05/2011 08:25

well yes there is that. but the world is in dire straits if the only way to truly 'get' the holocaust (and never again allow prejudice and racism etc) is to visit a camp. because the truth is that most of us won't.

i guess we all learn in different ways... there have been tremendously moving and horrifying tv series on WW2, for me personally walking over a grave (iykwim) would go too far into a touristic experience i think. thinking about it some more, i hate going to 'visit' churches and cathedrals when their purpose is not protected and has been appropriated by tourism. for example, me and dh were photographed by an american tourist as i sobbed in our local cathedral after having been told that they were preparing an operating theatre for me to have dd2 seven weeks early, because she had stopped growing a fortnight earlier. i am sure that as a terrified pregnant woman begging God to keep my child safe i made the cathedral experience more 'real' for him. Sad

AitchTwoOh · 21/05/2011 08:28

that's a little glib, exoticfruits. how is it different? bigger? prettier?

the holocaust is plenty big and ugly for me right now, i think there would be an element of thrill-chasing if i was to visit a camp.

Himalaya · 21/05/2011 08:34

I went to Krakow when I was 14 and decicided not go to Auschwitz, because I thought it would upset me too much. If I went back now I would definaitely go. YANBU

On a lighter note the Salt Mine at Wieliczka (full of sculptures made into the rock) is worth a visit.

Adversecamber · 21/05/2011 10:00

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Nancy66 · 21/05/2011 10:03

I was a wreck after attending the Imperial War Museum's Holocaust exhibtion - so don't think I could handle visiting Auschwitz but it's not ghoulish at all - it's an important part of history.

taylor74 · 21/05/2011 10:10

Remember there are still holocaust deniers out there. Without these camps they would have there way saying this never happened when it did.
These sites need to be preserved for future generations.

taylor74 · 21/05/2011 10:12

What's always troubled me though is the Americans knew about this during the war and did nothing sadly. They even took photos from the air of the camps and could see chimneys.

MissGreenEyes · 21/05/2011 10:17

It isn't ghoulish. It is a lesson in humanity.

I went to Belsen as a teenager and you just feel so humbled being there. So quiet and the air so heavy. They are a monument and I don't think there is anything wrong in visiting them and paying your respects.

BigGitDad · 21/05/2011 10:30

Of course you shoud go Humperdink. You should talk about it too when you get back to make sure people do not forget how people can treat each other.
I would ignore those who say it is goulish, you are there to learn, pay your respects and make aure those victims whether they are Polish, Jewish, Gay, Gypsies or whoever will never be forgotten.
As for the Holocaust deniers, I was out for a drink a while back when I met a dad of one of the kids at my DC school and he rubbished the numbers of the dead. (he had made other insensitive political comments all night) I just let rip and he was gob smacked. Told him it might have helped if he goes and see these places and speak to people who know before coming out with such rubbish. Sadly there will be deluded people who want to deny the number for political reasons more than anythng else.

BigGitDad · 21/05/2011 10:33

Taylor that is debatable. There was so much else going on in the war and no one could really believe then that such extermination could go on, on such a scale. Yes they could have bombed railway tracks etc if they were 100% certain (and I do not think they were) but Berlin was the key objective and that was to end the war as quickly as possible. That was where the war effort went.

HumperdinkFangboner · 21/05/2011 10:56

Taylor - I don't think it's quite as simple as the "Americans did nothing". Didn't the Nazis create 'propaganda camps'? So when officials visited it looked like the inmates were being treated well thus keeping them out of the real concentration camps and death camps?

OP posts:
HumperdinkFangboner · 21/05/2011 10:57

Apologies if my posts don't make sense, am on my iPhone and I can't see the screen very well!

OP posts:
Lovecat · 21/05/2011 10:58

I think, on reflection, that I'm with Aitch and Millyr. I think children need to be educated about the Holocaust, and perhaps visiting a Camp is a way of making that education 'real' to them.

DH has Jewish blood in him through his mother and his Grandmother's first husband died in the camps. However, he doesn't want to go and see the camps, and he thinks it's well, if not ghoulish, then a bit distasteful for someone with no connection to go and wander around what is a mass grave/murder machine for the sake of distraction. On the other hand, everyone has their own reasons for going and if you wanted to see where your relatives had been, I do understand that impulse and YWNBU to want to visit.

I can't understand anyone with no connection to it wanting to go, though. DH went on a stag do in Estonia a few years ago and, insanely, as part of their itinery they were offered a trip to a camp. That WAS ghoulish - they all refused (went go-karting instead), but if that's how it's being marketed, you can see why people would find it distasteful. I don't think the camps should be demolished, however.

On a personal note, my theatre group put on a play last year, Kindertransport, which deals with the Holocaust and the aftermath, and I played the mother of a child who is sent to England, who herself ends up in a camp but survives and returns to find her daughter, who no longer wants to know her. We were asked to perform it again as part of Holocaust Memorial week for an audience of survivors and families who had been affected by the Holocaust and the Transport. Even thinking about it now makes me well up, doing that was incredibly traumatic and although it 'needed' to be done, I would run a mile from doing anything else associated with the Holocaust because of how it affected me. I certainly couldn't bear to then go and visit a place where such evil took place, I know I would find it too harrowing.

edam · 21/05/2011 11:03

Humperdink, you are right - the Nazis created one 'show camp' (Teresianstat IIRC) to show the Red Cross that it was all fine. When the Red Cross visited, they had people playing table tennis. And when the Red Cross left it all went back to horrifying inhumanity.

Someone I know had relatives in Teresianstat (before he was born). They were then shipped off to Auschwitz and murdered. He had thought his whole family had been wiped out but happily a couple of years ago someone in Hungary saw his name on a paper in a medical journal and contacted him - turned out to be a cousin, son of the one person who had survived.

activate · 21/05/2011 11:04

I think it is important you visit.

Lest we forget!

deemented · 21/05/2011 11:07

I went to Belsen in my late teens. It was an experience i will never ever forget. All those people. It was humbling, teffifying and beautiful at the same time. I'll never forget it.

And i'll make sure that if my children get the chance, then they will go too, so that they don't forget.

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