Visiting concentration camps

[Helendee]

Am I unreasonable in feeling it is ghoulish at the least to want to visit Auschwitz, Belsen and othersvif their kind?
I was on another site reading how people were booking tours to the above and stating they were “looking forward” to it.
I totally understand the importance of ensuring these monstrosities never happen again but can’t help thinking that some people seem to get some kind of kick from misery.
Please help me to see another side.

I have been and it is a bit weird at first. Buses full of tourists arriving like you would to a theme park. However everyone was there to pay their respects and rememebr those who lost their lives there and thats the important thing.

I think we need more focus these days on how the Holocaust happened.

Psychology as well as history. Stanford Prison Experiment and Milgram for example. Teach people how they are controlled, how authority works and why obedience is less desirable than resistance.

I come from a Polish family.
Literally all but one member of my family were wiped out during WWII, and that was due to the sheer luck of a well-timed visit to then U.K. by my Nana. I’ve been to Auschwitz twice. Not out of any kind of morbid curiosity, but because the Holocaust is such an enormous part of my family’s history. I felt like I owed it to them to go there and honour their memory.
It’s a truly haunting, hideous place. But I’m glad I’ve seen it.
I plan on taking my own DCs once they are old enough to learn about our family’s history and where they came from.

Dh & I are planning a trip.

Some of my family were gypsies who were slaughtered there, I’d like to pay my respect to them.

@Patroclus thanks, haven’t read Yevtushenko in a very long time.

There is a book about IBM and the Holocaust. It lays out how the Nazis examined, in forensic detail, parish/county records ( going back hundreds of years) so that they effectively built a database of Jews in each country (Wannsee agreement).

As someone upthread said, it is the systematic, organised, complete approach that was taken that was instrumental to how the Nazis were able to do what they did.

I'm going for the first time next week, I view it as an act of remembrance.

I strongely recommend you visit. The scale really brings it home to you what man can do it his fellow men. Those poor people. It was the mass graves that hit me hard.

To be quite honest, I think we need more focus these days on how the Holocaust happened. The drip-drip of othering rhetoric that slid into full dehumanisation. Germany did not just wake up on the wrong side of the bed one day and decide to build some concentration camps

Yes, absolutely. As I mentioned upthread, I believe we're sleepwalking at the moment and not really noticing how the landscape is changing.

I think its really important to go if you can. I never understood the enormity until then. Also oradour sur glane

JamieVardysHavingAParty Thanks for your comment, I appreciate it.

I said early on that I thought the OP was brave to start the discussion - I've thought about it many times but I knew what the responses would be and that it would just make me angry and upset.

If they had destroyed these places and made a proper site of remembrance I would certainly want to go and pay homage. I wonder how many tourists would bother then though?

It's not really a surprise that just as the last survivors and witnesses are passing, we are walking back into this.

One of my grandfathers saw the liberation of a camp himself. Those people were an antidote to both denial and all the rhetoric. I can still hear my grandfather, when snot nosed wankers would use the war in defence of the indefensible, shouting, "we didn't do it for you, you bastard".

Oblomov
I don’t give a flying feck what you think of me and what do your academic achievements have to do with this subject?
I suggest you study human nature as I can assure you there are people out there who get off on misery and pain!

To be quite honest, I think we need more focus these days on how the Holocaust happened. The drip-drip of othering rhetoric that slid into full dehumanisation.

That's true, just look at labour with the antisemitism, the entryism of the party, the populists approach of offering simplistic solutions, the we are mirroring the 1930's is more ironically coming from the left.

I do kind of get you with the grief tourism, and yet I have been to Auschwitz, the Hiroshima museum in Japan, and the Twin Towers memorial, I haven't decided I need to publicly display it or pretend I have a deeper understanding of it, its the grief tourism that is an issue and pretending that because you visited such sites you have such a deep understanding of geopolitik.

People going to see it is fine, trying to backhandedly shame people visiting these types of money making visitor centres as a moral stand point isn't other being out of touch, it's reaching almost 'woke' levels of over analysis that future generations will laugh at.

Some people aren't very good at expressing themselves. "Looking forward" might have meant that they were anticipating a profound and moving experience. Like a funeral can be life affirming in some way - it connects you to what is important.

"To me it's just grief tourism"

I couldn’t put it better than @maddy68.

This thread is shocking.
Embarrassing.

I think in a world where people are so quick to refer to Donald Trump and Boris Johnson as "Nazis" and "worse than Hitler" it is extremely important that people keep visiting the concentration camps. Never forget.

Oh dear OP

Yes, absolutely. As I mentioned upthread, I believe we're sleepwalking at the moment and not really noticing how the landscape is changing.

A few years ago, an American Trump-supporter was arguing with me and my concerns about human rights and repeating history, and telling me that I was disrespectful to the people who died in the Holocaust. He focused on the end results and details of the atrocities, therefore I was wrong. Obviously.

It's something I would like to do one day. I can understand how some might see it as ghoulish I suppose.
I just think we owe it to the millions who suffered and died in those places to remember them.
To me it's a mark if respect, like visiting war memorials, honouring the memory of those who lost their lives, not just going for a wander round like it's a tourist spot.
Each to their I guess.

I blank out the crassness of some people's behaviour on social media as a coping mechanism because it upsets me to think about such cavalier attitude to the suffering of others. How can you "look forward to" it as if it was entertainment. Maybe they watch too much reality tv and can't differentiate between fiction and fact.

I went to the Yad Vashem in Israel with my uncle and found it to be a very moving and thought provoking place of peace and reconciliation.

There is an eternal flame burning for the dearly departed and lots of narratives displayed to help explain the events of the Holocaust in a way that informs rather than placing blame or perpetuating anger. It helped me to understand what my ancestors had to endure, which put it into some sort of perspective.

I was sobbing a lot of the time through sheer grief at all those people's lost lives. I do recognise there are also other atrocities affecting other nations and their people, in addition to Jews, Gypsies and other minority groups so it's important to recognise those tragedies as well.

I think it should be mandatory for everyone to go. It should be compulsory to see what happens when people do nothing, and when people are seduced by powerful megalomaniacs

This exactly.

I dislike hearing people say they wouldn’t go because a) they appreciate the enormity of the horror from watching films b) they would find it too upsetting.

I think we owe it to mankind to see what horrors we are capable of inflicting on others. It should be obligatory to go in person as it just may greatly reduce the chances of it reoccurring.

My parents took us to Dachau when I was about 8. My older sister (10) who understood more threw up and then fainted. It was awful, it made a lasting impression.

My dad spoke to us before we went and explained it would not be 'nice' or 'fun' in any way but that we should witness this to understand it should never happen again.

My strongest memories are piles of confiscated clothes and shoes; extracted gold teeth; the sheer scale of them camp. I'm grateful I was taken there.