To want to visit Auschwitz?

[lottieandmia]

I feel that it's something we all should do. I've been reading Primo Levi's book and I just can't imagine the level of suffering those people endured.

I mentioned it to an acquaintance and he said 'it's the sort of thing Jewish people do' and basically said I should not go, it would be depressing and there have been lots of other genocides. He has really annoyed me with these sentiments which come across as antisemitic imo.

Fascism is definitely on the rise everywhere right now :(

Maybe people do these disrespectful things because they can't cope with the reality of what happened? And they want to distance themselves. It's no excuse of course.

I have been and would recommend that anyone who gets the opportunity does so. It is a truly harrowing and thought provoking experience but also a true reminder of how lucky we are. In my ignorance at the time (it was about ten years ago) I thought we had learnt from it but now I know otherwise. At the time I remember thinking I just couldn't understand how anyone got to that point and now I realise it's never stopped, I was just ignorant of what was happening in the world.
I also was very upset by people laughing and joking as we walked around. My "teacher look"came in useful as we went through the gas chambers. I was utterly disgusted by the total disrespect and lack of awareness shown.
The thing that will always stay with me is a room I had to leave. Huge glass cabinets are filled with the belongings of victims. One in particular I won't go into, made me distraught. It was the saddest thing I have ever seen and such an important reminder of the vile realities of what these people endured. We must never forget and that's why it is so important it is there. I have also been to Sachsenhausen but am reluctant to visit such a place ever again as it is just so awful to contemplate. I recently read "The Storyteller" by Jodi Picoult and a big portion of the book is a fictionalised first hand account and I would heartily recommend it, even though I cried through most of it. This is a part of history that must never be forgotten. The realities of the depths humanity can sink to are an abhorrence to most people yet it is still happening today. I can't understand it. The current climate really frightens me as intolerance, bigotry and selfishness are growing by the day.
I would go OP. It really does give you a sense of perspective and affords and opportunity for you to pay your own respects to those who suffered and died.

I think I was too shocked to be honest

There was an incident last year where a British stag party were asked to leave the Memorial as they were walking round carrying a blow up sex doll. Idiots

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/10/british-stag-party-stirs-outrage-by-bringing-sex-doll-to-ground/

I think people do these things for social media personally. They want to look like a "thoughtful and respectful" person to all of their friends on Facebook.

Similar to "animal lovers" having a photo taken with a caged animal abroad so they can share it on Facebook.

It's scary what people overlook for likes and followers.

cave ugh why would anyone do that, absolutely disgusting behaviour. I'd be mortified if I was related to any of them.

Same as Cave i was, probably naively, so shocked to see all the gurning selfies at the WTC reflection pools. Uterly devastating, the sheer size of these two pools, all of the names beautifully carved in to the sides... And dickheads leaning or sitting on them. And picking up the white roses by some of the names, not making the slightest effort to find out WHY they were there - to mark that particular person's birthday... I have no words how frustrated that made me. I told off several people who seemed suitably embarrassed, but there were just so many of them.

OP, i've bever been to a concentration camp, but would definitely go if the opportunity presented itself. Though by the sounds of it, i'll be just as disappointed and frustrated by my fellow man, unfortunately...

I think my friend was suggesting that to go would be in bad taste. Personally I don't agree. I would like to take my dd with me. She's 13. I think this is old enough.

I haven't been to Auschwitz (although would go if I had the opportunity as I think it's very important too)

But I have visited Toul Sleng - the former school that became a prison during the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia and is now kept as a genocide museum complete with blood stains on the walls.

17,000 people passed through that prison and only about 7 are known to have got out alive. Everyone else was either killed at the prison or transferred to one of the killing fields and murdered there. When we visited there were signs up telling you not to laugh - but how the fuck you could even raise a smile there I do not know. It was humid and boiling hot but I didn't even sweat, the atmosphere of the place was so cold and desolate even though it was in the middle of Phnom Penh.

Afterwards we went to the killing fields just outside Phnom Penh (there are others in Cambodia but this particular site is probably the best known one). While we walked around our guide pointed out one mass grave after another and as we walked we realised that there were white bits showing in the ground and little whisps of fabric. I asked the guide about them and he told us that there were so many thousands of people buried there we were walking over them, it was their bones and remains of their clothes coming through the ground.

I have visited. I would go, if I were you OP.
Tour was very respectfully and appropriately conducted, and it is something that will live long in my memory.

I really recommend going. It made a lasting impression on me I think, altered the way I saw the world in some ways. I was only 15 when I visited. It's difficult to explain what it's like but I don't think there's many places like it on earth. It's silent mostly, eerie, the birds in the trees don't sing.
The actual scale and reality of what happened hits you and resonates with you when you're stood in front of belongings of the victims like their suitcases, piles of glasses, their clothes, their hair.. I broke down in tears over a pair of baby shoes - a victim who would've been gassed immediately on arrival. Reading about it is different to seeing it. It's horrific but I think it's hugely important.

YANBU but I just can't understand why people need to visit.
I'm Jewish so I feel like I should 'get it' but I just don't.

We know what happened there. There are countless documentaries, articles, books both fiction and factual detailing the horrors. Every year on Memorial Day there are interviews with survivors. We know what happened was evil, terrible and should never happen again and that we should not forget. And I get that of course.

But what a visit there can tell you I'm not sure. I don't feel any need to actually be there to feel any more appalled and despairing about what happened.

Yanbu. I have been. It was harrowing but I felt absolutely necessary to understanding the horror of what happened.

I did feel shocked at the lack of seriousness from some visitors though.

YANBU, your post was intelligible and I'm shocked by some of the comments you have had.

I went with my dad a few years ago. He really wanted to go. No one else would go with him.

It was by far the most upsetting harrowing uncomfortable experience of my life. But it was really interesting. Sad. But interesting. Not something I'll forget in a hurry.

The day we went it was very atmospheric. Grey and cold. It was quiet and eerie. No birds fly over apparently. I don't recall seeing any.

I won't be going again. Once was most definetlu enough. It made me ashamed to be a human. The thought that people did what they did. Eugh.

I've since learned that my grandad was a soldier and went to Bergen Belsen. We have diaries of his time in the army (he wasn't a prisoner there but was there right at the end to help liberate it). Some of the things he saw are just horrible. He never spoke about it. We only learned this after he died.

On a work trip to Israel we also visited the holocaust museum there. Again it was very sobering.

To answer your original post go if you want but be prepared to be upset.

When I went about 10 years ago, selfies weren't a thing obviously and I certainly didn't get a sense af any disrespect. I'm at grinning selfies. I can perhaps understand photos and even selfies, but grinning Surely this isn't usual?

I visited 20 years ago when I was living in the region. It was February, snowing, I went alone and I think I saw maybe 2 other people there during the whole visit.

I have also visited Theresienstadt (or Terezin) in the Czech Republic and Lidice.

I went to Anne Frank's house on a school trip to Amsterdam aged 10 and I am planning on taking the DCs there at Easter.

Their father is/was a refugee and at aged 10 and 8 I think they are not too young to learn that there are some really evil fuckers in this world. And the way our world is looking at the moment, the sooner they learn the better .

I think the Holocaust is something that has to be taught in an age appropriate way.

Although frightening things happen to children now. And they happened to children in the 1930s, I think it can be useful to focus as much on the way in which people work together to defeat oppression.

So when children are quite small starting with topics like the Kindertransport makes sense.

I think the fact it makes people uncomfortable is the very reason it should stand for all time. Those saying it should be obliterated are missing the point. You cannot wipe away history because it's uncomfortable.

I've been to Yad Vashem twice. The first time it was just harrowing. I went back because I wanted to get through the shock and learn. I will go to Auschwitz one day when my children are older.

Ironically the thing that scared me most was seeing the black SS uniform on a mannequin. That terrified me for what it stood for and I actually felt evil from it. The fact that someone had actually worn it and committed mass murder in it for some reason it made it very real for me. I cannot imagine how terrifying it must have been for the prisoners.

Steven Spielberg actually said he had a hard time talking to the extras dressed as SS soldiers on the set of Schindlers List. I can understand that.

"dailymaillazyjournos

YANBU but I just can't understand why people need to visit.
I'm Jewish so I feel like I should 'get it' but I just don't.

We know what happened there. There are countless documentaries, articles, books both fiction and factual detailing the horrors. Every year on Memorial Day there are interviews with survivors. We know what happened was evil, terrible and should never happen again and that we should not forget. And I get that of course.

But what a visit there can tell you I'm not sure. I don't feel any need to actually be there to feel any more appalled and despairing about what happened."

These are my feelings, also. In Warsaw, a few years ago, we visited many places linked to those times. It was harrowing - and not even that word can do the feeling justice. It haunted me in our last days there.
I used to want to go - feeling I needed to go there, through the gates, as a mark of remembrance to those many who had passed through. However, now I feel you don't have to be physically there to remember them.
It would be unbearable to see fools taking selfies or behaving inappropriately in other ways. Unless I could go in deepest winter when there might be only very few visitors, I have decided it is better not to go. Some idiot somewhere probably has it on a ghastly "bucket list".

That's interesting about Steven Spielberg. Yes, it would be hard to disassociate. No wonder.

I went whilst in Poland and I'm glad I did. I think if you have the opportunity it's important to pay your respects in a way. It was upsetting but I know I will never forget and it hammered the sheer enormity of it home to me in a way that a textbook never could.

However a Polish girl I knew had never been, and didn't like that it was all a lot of people seemed to visit Poland for. She didn't mean it disrespectfully, she knew the importance of Auschwitz as a memorial, but I think I made her sad that for some people visiting that was all they saw in her lovely country.

Obvs your friend is wrong. But I know you know that. I think cameras should just be banned from such memorials. If you go, you never forget parts of it. You don't need pics.

I've not been to Auschwitz but I've been to other places. As a young adult, several decades ago, I visited Dachau on a scorching hot day - was struck by how unprotected to the elements prisoners would have been. And the huge expanse of ground that was involved.

More recently - a few years ago - I visited Buchenwald. Yes, harrowing but I am glad I went. I was alone - which was preferable for me but I am quite a loner. Because it was more recent, I'll tell you what has stayed with me most. The building where people were tortured - it was 'cleaned up' but still evoked how it might have been. And there were incinerators there too. I walked over to the rail 'station', only a short walk from the camp perimeter. Still a platform and 2 sets of rails I think. I stood there alone just thinking about the people who made that journey. The fear and anguish they must have felt. I've seen enough films and read lots on the Holocaust and it was easy to evoke the idea of the place when it was in use. On the day i wasn't able to visit the secondary camp (dreadful joint pain) through the trees, or the clock memorial. At Buchenwald there were very many political prisoners, some Jewish, some not.

Something that struck me was the remains of a zoo near the top perimeter fence of Buchenwald. It was built to entertain the children of SS officers. Such callous irony in that.

At B'wald there was an amazing art exhibition in one building. Work done both by prisoners and also by survivors post-war. The imagination put into finding materials whilst in captivity was astounding, often just drawing with twigs and mud. Sadly there would have been copious mud.

There are memorials to ALL the groups who were in there. I'd say up to 20 groups. Both times I saw some people very upset. I can't recall photography - except while I was at the train platform, a man in the distance photographed the station. I imagine I am on somebody's FB now. I did feel a bit annoyed he didn't walk right over to look 'properly'. But his choice.

You don't have to leave the UK to learn about the Holocaust though. One part of the Imperial War museum in London has a Holocaust section. I went with ds1 when he was mid teens.

Something else - seeing where the camp of Buchenwald is situated puts the kibosh on the idea that ordinary Germans knew nothing. It's on a hill at one side of the town of Weimar. One village in particular must have had a great view. In one exhibition there is discussion of this, how much others wld have known, and pictures of local people being forced too visit after the liberation. Obviously they were very shocked. It's likely they knew there were prisoners but not the gruesome detail. Till the rail track was extended (as in my previous post) prisoners had to walk from the town station in a populated area for 2 or 3 kms.

In case I sound like the perfect parent, two of my DC were told off by a member of staff at the memorial in Berlin, as I was in the process of trying to stop them form running through the maze-like stones. They stopped as soon as I explained why it was inappropriate to run. And they learned from it, wouldn't do that again.

I haven't been to Auschwitz but I have visited Terezin and the Anne Frank house. Both were very powerful and moving experiences. I do think that people should visit these sites if they can do so respectfully. Unfortunately, some visitors seem to think they are in a theme park.

Someone asked about memorials to victims of other totalitarian regimes. In Russia (and in other former Soviet republics) there are monuments to the victims of Stalin's terror. An annual ceremony called "Returning the Names" takes place every year, during which the names of victims are publicly read aloud. In recent years a project known as "The Last Address" has been responsible for placing small memorial plaques on apartment buildings around Russia. Each of the plaques lists the name and occupation of an ordinary citizen who had lived in that building, as well as the dates he or she was arrested, executed, and "rehabilitated" (posthumously cleared of all charges). It is an extraordinarily moving tribute, especially given the political climate in Russia these days and the Russian government's outright hostility toward Memorial, the largest human rights group in Russia.