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 agree with jakinaboxx that if the survivors and the families wish it to remain open then that’s of course what should happen. Their opinion is really the only one that should be listened to.

I do understand the concerns that it’s increasingly becoming a place for grief tourism. I don’t know what could be done about that. Maybe a smaller amount of permits to visit with the focus on educational visits and people with a personal link to the atrocities. The problem with that is there may be some people who go as a box ticking exercise but leave with a profound understanding.

chickenpie

I agree re: the Facebook check-ins and selfies. I have to say I just don't get check-ins, generally. I hate the idea of FB knowing where I am at any given moment. It can be an invitation to burglars.

I visited Sachsenhausen when in Berlin as it felt kind of wrong to not go. It was horrible though, you know what they went through but to hear it from the actual victims was shocking. The pathetic jail sentences some people got for torturing those people made me so angry too. Some of them got away with it completely.

I couldn't go near the gas chambers though. Not sure if you could go in but I wouldn't go near them. The mortuary was bad enough.

Can't believe people go and take selfies though. Shouldn't be taking any photos really to be honest I think phones should be banned from going in. You should be experiencing it and understanding what happened there, not playing on your phone. And it is weird that they say they are looking forward to it. We knew we wanted to go, but weren't looking forward to it.

I've been to Auschwitz
I'd really like to go again
it had a, profound effect on me and I want to explore that furtger

imo everyone should go, we should never forget these atrocities and I firmly believe, sadly, that we are only a generation away from that.

I have been to one. It was incredibly moving. It made me fear, more than ever, the slippery slope that risks leading via dubious acts in the direction of justification of atrocity. I am glad I went, even though it made me feel pretty grim.

I apologise for not reading the full thread first.

I went to Belsen when I was 14. My great gramp was held there.

It was truely humbling.

I understood what people meant be deafening silence.

So so so emotional.

But those taking selfies at the place where people were executed (nowadays not then, selfies didn’t exist) can do one

It’s not an attraction. It’s a place of reflection.

Ishotmrburns

I agree. I hate the way "Nazi" is tossed around so carelessly these days. Vote Brexit? You're a Nazi
vote Conservative? ditto.
Because of course Corbyn hasn't an antisemitic bone in his body. NOT!

I have never visited one of the concentration camp sites but I visited Spandau prison in Berlin before it was demolished and that was bad enough. A grim, dismal place. There are better ways to remember the holocaust.

Oblomov20

Oh dear what exactly?

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.

There are migrant children, separated from their parents, dying in camps in the States. Lest we forget, my arse.

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

A few posters are trying to sow the seed in this thread.

It shows they do not have any understanding of history nor politics and just read headlines, we need history, we also need to understand history and not hold it up to our current standards, something the so called 'intelligent critical thinking' left can't seem to understand.

Anecedotes about trump supporters is the same as my anecdote about a full on anti semite corbyn supporter where she was unironically spouting far right 'jews rule the world' type comments , it means sod all.

I definitely think it should be mandatory. Especially in the world we currently live in where we seem to have learned nothing from WW2 and seem to see ourselves surrounded by bigoted leaders once again.

I went to Auschwitz, also went to another camp near Berlin, and I am glad I did, I go to all the memorials I can go to honoring/highlighting important local/historical events everywhere I travel because it is easy to forget how bad humans can be. One of the hardest documentary to watch (that is available on Netflix) is a documentary from 1945 with simply raw footage from the camps at time of liberation, it's absolutely heart wrenching and sickening seeing all the corpse, and people half dead/half alive BUT I am glad I watched it because I won't forget.

I have worked with Jewish children/adults, and I would feel much worse telling them that I can't possibly go somewhere because I would be too upset by what happened there (when I didn't have to live through it and they are the victims) than I would/do going there and taking it in. What's tough is looking at some of the Jewish babies I have looked after and know (and love) and thinking '' wow 70 years ago you probably would have been gazed or had your skull smashed against a tree at birth for being born just the way you are.'' it's awful, but it's true and I want to remember that, despite how upsetting it is, because it's the reality of the world we live in, the reality some people are still living through in some parts of the world, and something that might turn into reality again if we aren't careful.

I went to Auschwitz 15 odd years ago when travelling through Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe. I was interested in history at school, but am no expert on WW2 and it was interesting to experience the direct impacts that the war and occupation had on various places in the region. With the exception of the Channel Islands, the impact on Britain was more remote and a different kind of danger. Bombing raids were of course lethal and destructive, but that's not the same fear as people in the streets who may hunt you down.

There were Jewish roots in my family. I'm not sure if they were sufficiently diluted that the WW2 generations would have escaped the attentions of the Nazis in the event of an invasion. I remember it hitting me that the list of other groups targeted in the Holocaust, homosexuals, the disabled and Jehovah's Witnesses would have directly impacted many of my contemporary family members.

I'm not generally drawn to gory. I went to Auschwitz because the history is so important, uncomfortably so. There is a difference in intellectually knowing from a school textbook or documentary and physically standing infront of the evidence that 6 million is not just a big number, it was individual human beings who were stripped down as commodities before being enslaved to work to death or slaughtered en-masse. Seeing their hair that was shaved off to make sacks, or the removed prosthetics, glasses, shoes hit it down to the level of individual human beings (which is why Anne Frank's story is so poigniant).

The basic crude sheds that people were piled into also hit hard, imagining the overcrowding that people were expected to exist in. I remember the feeling of bleak, quiet. I honestly believe that the scale of suffering has permanently marred that place.

It is so, so important that places such as Auschwitz are preserved as they were. To keep that history tangible. To be a memorial to the people who were murdered there and elsewhere. I don't think it should be compulsory, but it should be there for people who have the opportunity to go.

I definitely think it should be mandatory.

How would you enforce that?

I understand why people go and I don't think it's ghoulish (not including moronic grinning selfie takers) but I don't think I will ever do so.
The camps are more than museums and monuments, they are graveyards. The souls and bodies of millions rest in the earth of those places. I remember reading a record about a baby who was gassed at Auschwitz on her first birthday.. There are few words to describe such atrocities. My babies ate cake and played surrounded by love and warmth on their birthdays.
In a strange way, I feel I have no right to be there.
I think for Jewish people, Roma, gay people, disabled people, Jehovah's witnesses, it is different. And especially so for those who lost family members, they should always be able to pay their respects.
I think all the sites should be preserved and looked after for as long as possible, the final resting places of the innocent. It is sacred ground and should be treated with the greatest respect.

There are migrant children, separated from their parents, dying in camps in the States. Lest we forget, my arse.

This was before the current regime got to that point. I've never felt so sick to think 'I told you so'. But it was inevitable, because as a society, everyone in the West seems to think that Germany just woke up one day and thought "ooh, let's commit some atrocities today".

You step on the pathto the Holocaust whenever you hear of people suffering in incarceration, and say "well, they broke a law", without asking yourself first, "is this law just?" and "is this penalty just?"

I have visited Auschwitz, and a few others on a school trip through Eastern Europe specifically to learn about the Holocaust. Being Jewish myself, I had family who died in the camps. It was a really difficult trip, but seeing the camps made it less of a story and really brought forth the reality of the events. Only after I visited them was when I became involved in politics and doing my best to help ensure that nothing similar can ever happen again.

Those who post "looking forward to it" though? They're in for a nasty shock.

JustAnotherLurker

I have been on this site since 2009. Have my very first ever . Hope you're honoured.

just another lurker it is hard to understand your point. I think it is important to respect the scale of the atrocities and not make cheap comparisons, but to totally banish nazi Germany into a category of "other" and not recognise parallels with the modern day, or to recognise that there are vulnerabilities in the human psyche that makes this sort of atrocity possible is failing to learn the lessons of history, surely?

I went with school in year 10. I found it quite a humbling experience.

And i really don't understand those who are saying this thread is embarrassing? It's a delicate issue, surely, with legitimate arguments on both sides, and deserves to be debated? The OP has said she's open to other points of view.

DH and I went to Auschwitz-Birkenau whilst in Krakow. It was the most harrowing experience of my life. We stood alone in the gas chamber and it was just the most sickening feeling. I personally felt I needed to go to honour the victims.

I'm not strong enough to cope with the thought of children in there. Listening to interviews of survivors of Mengele's experiments was already more than I could take.

I do understand completely those who do not wish to go or feel uncomfortable going. No one should feel forced to go and I also get what nocountry is saying. I know someone who lost her grandma in Auchswitz and she just says she would find it too upsetting going there.

I do sometimes think (especially on MN) there is a race to prove how empathetic we all are and I actually find that distasteful. It isn't "narcissistic" (as a previous poster mentioned) to visit a concentration camp nor is it lacking empathy to not go.

Live and let live!

I visited Auschwitz ten years ago. I went out of respect. It was not a 'nice' visit. I did not 'look forward' to going. But I went because we cannot ever let ourselves forget the atrocities and evil that happened there. There's already a worrying amount of Holocaust denial happening. If we do not visit these sites, if we feel it is easier, less troublesome to forget it even happened, 'out of sight out of mind', we are doing the millions who suffered and died a huge disservice. And if history forgets, then history repeats.

It was the saddest place I have ever been. Every face I saw was sombre. No birds were singing despite it being in June. I cried all the way home and it still makes me tearful to think of it now. I will only go back once and that will be to take my children, so they too can learn what happens when humanity turns its back on the suffering of others in the pursuit of an easier life. And yes, it is such an important lesson to be reminded of in today's fragile times...

I am disgusted by those who use these sites as backgrounds for their selfies though. I didn't take any pictures, it would not have felt right. And I'm dubious about the 'dark tourism' thing.