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AIBU?

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Original poster

Not for tourist pics

97 replies

teagivesmejoy · 12/12/2019 17:02

AIBU to think that Auschwitz should not be viewed as a typical tourist destination?
2 of my friends have separately in the last week visited and posted photos on SM.
I have never visited myself, and know it must be incredibly harrowing.
Can't see why people feel the need to post pics like they're enjoying an actual holiday?
Of course each to their own etc, surely it's not just me who finds it disrespectful?

OP posts:
ActualHornist · 12/12/2019 23:28

If you are there to take photos, then you know about it.

If you're looking up photos, you know about it.

If you see Uncle Pete's smiling selfie with the backdrop of a barracks in a Nazi death camp on Facebook what does that teach anyone?

There are plenty of official photographs. I think it's inappropriate to take photos. Of a memorial, I think that's ok. Of the actual place? No.

TrainspottingWelsh · 12/12/2019 23:31

I don't know. Of course a smiling pose is completely unacceptable. But I know a few people that have very close personal links that have taken respectful photos and I don't think it's up to me or anyone else to tell those people they shouldn't have done.

andpancakesforbreakfast · 12/12/2019 23:52

If you're looking up photos, you know about it.

If you see Uncle Pete's smiling selfie with the backdrop of a barracks in a Nazi death camp on Facebook what does that teach anyone?

It doesn't have to be the extreme, we are talking about taking photos of a place, not plonking Uncle Pete in it.

You think it's inappropriate, I do not agree.
There are plenty of good reasons why people will want to use their cameras. If you don't feel it's right, just don't take pics yourself.

CripsSandwiches · 12/12/2019 23:56

Definitely agree, a visit to auschwitz is not the moment to draw attention to yourself with a Facebook shot. Keep it personal and respectful.

NameChangeNugget · 12/12/2019 23:58

It’s a haunting place for reflection.

Not for checking in on Facebook

Beketaten · 13/12/2019 00:01

I think visiting and sharing that visit, including through photos, is necessary - we need to be reminded of the worst excesses humanity can sink to. Not grinning selfies or clambering around at memorials though, that is disrespectful. It's a shame some people can't/won't see this.

Honeybee85 · 13/12/2019 00:05

I have visited Auschwitz twice, before social media became a thing.

It’s the most horrible place I’ve ever visited, on both occasions I was there on a beautiful summer day even, can’t imagine how it must be in winter days. I don’t even have the words to describe it. Haunting is an attempt but doesn’t cover it.
It’s a place of utter misery where the incredible suffering of many innocent people still sort of lingers in the air. English is not my native language so excuse me for maybe not wording it in the best way, but I have described it in my own language as feeling like pure evil is touching you like a passing gust of wind. I had nightmares for weeks after visiting there.

Therefor I’m a bit twisted on this.
It’s a place that should be treated cautiously with utter respect. Maybe social media isn’t a good thing then as it tends to focus on naice pictures and look at me ticking items of my travel bucketlist.

On the other hand, it can create more awareness about places like these and attract more visitors.
And with growing antisemitism in many places in Europe, more awareness of the horrors of WW II is a neccesairy, it can help to fight this concerning development.

Original poster
teagivesmejoy · 13/12/2019 08:17

@NameChangeNugget my sentiment entirely. Well said.

OP posts:
SallyLovesCheese · 13/12/2019 08:32

I went around 12 years ago with a youth theatre company, children aged 11-17. We visited Bergen-Belsen and Treblinka as well. I was impressed at how respectful they all were and felt it was a powerful memory for them to have. We didn't really take any photos and I hope they still remember, as I do, how it felt, without the need for photos.

partyhatsoff · 13/12/2019 08:36

Depends. Take respectful pics, but not selfies or similar. I have friends who posted pics of the camp but in a ' never forget' kind of way, they certainly weren't all 'woo hoo, on me holibobs' about it.
Social Media raises awareness, and given the rise in holocaust denial - particularly as the survivors, the witnesses, age and die - I have no issue with respectful pics posted that remind people and perhaps encourage them tp go to these places themselves.

StonedRoses · 13/12/2019 08:41

In ‘The History Boys’ by Alan Bennett Hector asks ‘where do they eat their sandwiches? Is there a gift shop’. Because anything you do there is inappropriate given the scale of the atrocities. Perhaps too big for us to comprehend.

ChrisPriss · 13/12/2019 08:48

I was respectful and emotional when I visited Auschwitz a few years ago, and deeply upset to see elderly Americans "posing" for photos.
Also upset by the many photos posted on Facebook by a friend who visited there as part of a girls' holiday to Krakow.

Sirzy · 13/12/2019 08:56

I guess the key thing in this is if people think photos and posting photos on social media is automatically disrespectful. Personally I don’t see it that way at all, and I think especially now as we reach a point where those atrocities are more and more out of living memory of people it becomes even more important it is discussed and remembered and photos can be a good way of doing that.

I am currently reading a book about Auschwitz, although it is based in fact and on the true stories of people there of course there are bits added as fiction too and the book doesn’t try to pretend otherwise. That doesn’t automatically make it a bad thing though as it helps more people to gain some level of comprehension of the scale of awful that went on there

AlexDrake1981 · 13/12/2019 09:05

I remember once hearing a woman state she 'can't wait to go to Auschwitz!' Like it was a hen weekend or something similar 🙄.

IncrediblySadToo · 13/12/2019 09:23

I went to Dachau many years ago. Pre SM. I took a few photos, because I never wanted to forget how scary & awful it was & it actually felt respectful not disrespectful to do so. An acknowledgement of what they went through if you like.

But I think if I went now I’d get very angry with people taking selfie type holiday photos. It’s just not right.

SerenDippitty · 13/12/2019 09:30

I visited the Memorial garden in Lockerbie a few years back. I did take a few photos but no selfies and didn’t share any. It was beautiful and sad and peaceful all at once.

caperplips · 13/12/2019 09:49

I 100% agree with you OP. I studied history and am avidly interested in it and have been my entire life. We have been to Krakow but not Auschwitz as dd was too young. I will return and visit in the coming years. I am 'friends' with someone on FB and have hidden her now (can't delete as a sort if in-law) who went to Krakow for a weekend and visited Auschwitz and posted a load of photos of it in amongst all the photos of her posing with cocktails and in bars with the duck out and her tongue sticking out coz she is so Krazy. It made my blood boil tbh, but she is spectacularly stupid.

We also saw teens playing chasing and screeching and taking selfies by climbing up onto the Holocaust Memorial sculpture in Berlin and they (very rightly) got in trouble with security guards there.

There was an artist who trawled FB for selfies in concentration camps and superimposed the actual atrocities into the photos with the gurning, grinning idiots in the photos - it was a very effective way of publicly shaming them

spingly · 13/12/2019 09:50

I agree.

antisupermum · 13/12/2019 10:53

I agree with not taking selfies but I do think putting it on SM is a good thing. With the last of the WW2 generation dying out, its important to keep the horrors of the war camps and the war in peoples minds. Many people will never visit these spots and sometimes it is only by seeing the images and information provided by SM that will make them aware of the atrocities. It is only by keeping these memories alive that we can hope to never repeat them. For the younger generations particularly, where SM is so prevalent and the wars seem so distant and alien for them.

Beerincomechampagnetastes · 13/12/2019 10:54

I was in Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam and an American tourist sat her children down won the floor to give them a picnic of sandwiches from her bag. I was Shock and quite upset tbh why couldn’t they wait until the got yo the cafe at the end?
It’s like she thought it wasn’t a real place.. or it was a movie set.

Beerincomechampagnetastes · 13/12/2019 10:57

Sorry about the typos Blush

ForkThis · 13/12/2019 11:01

Never been, but I was disgusted at the number of people taking selfies at the 9/11 memorial. Me and my friend were just Shock

Lepetitpiggy · 13/12/2019 11:11

I went with eldest dd in November and we did take photos. She put some up on her SM with a very beautifully worded piece abut the horrendous things that happened, Many of her friends - in their late 20s - really knew very little so she felt she needed to keep the memory going.
There was a man there however who was hugely disrespectful, there are two rooms where there are absolutely no photos allowed and he just wandered around videoing it.

Honeybee85 · 13/12/2019 11:24

@caperplips

Good that you didn’t take your DD to Auschwitz because she was young.

I went there at age 16 and went another time at age 17 and even that was quite young I think.
I once met a Polish lady who had visited Auschwitz on a school educational trip when she was 14 and she said it was definitely too heavy for someone of that age to go there.

MisterT373 · 13/12/2019 11:31

This is nothing new. I remember visiting in 1980 and was stunned to see a German family group having a photo taken next to the ovens.