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.

@Graphista not true. History teacher here. The causes of WW2 and the rise of the Nazis is a huge component of many GCSE syllabi. I'm also head of citizenship and the UK political system has to be taught. It's also part of the 'Democracy' component of British Values which is compulsory in schools. It may be taught discretely - we do a politics drop down day - but it has to be taught.

Holocaust Memorial Day (which is 27 Jan ) is acknowledged in many schools and events remembers all genocides.

Auschwitz is some where I’d like to visit as think it’s important to have a visual link to the past and considering the nut jobs running both the UK and US where we could end up again.

We are about to visit Ghana in West Africa and whilst there we will be visiting the castles that we sent millions into slavery from. Again important to understand our past and our part in it.

Are you going to the fort at Cape Coast @lovelyupnorth ? I've been there

@jakinaboxx

We are two weeks and counting.

I've not been. I have been to the Anne Frank house and Oradour sur Glane.

I think whether something should be preserved or flattened should be a decision made by survivors and the families of those who did not survive.

That is different for different people, OIradore has just been left and will eventually become rubble.

Holocaust survivors and their families want the camps preserved and they visit, that should be their choice.

I think flattening places makes them fade more quickly from history, the British concentration camps in South Africa were tents and are virtually forgotten outside South Africa.

Everyone should go, you only appreciate the enormity of it when you see it for yourself. It's a museum and must never happen again

My uncle was one of the first to arrive to liberate Belsen and saw the most appalling things. It affected him enormously and if the subject was ever even mentioned on television he would switch off and burst into tears. He would never even talk about it.

Having visited Auschwitz and also the slave castles in Ghana I would say that both are humbling experiences that I would never forget, and will also one day will take my (older) children to see. We are so, so lucky that the huge majority of us will never have to feel the things people suffered, but I think we at least owe it to them to learn first hand about it.
I wanted to go to these places to educate myself on the history and to at least try to understand why or how they happened.
I agree with OP some people do seem to relish it a little to much, when we visited Elmina Castle there was a couple laughing and photographing everything, it was very uncomfortable. Luckily our guide told them where to go.

The causes of WW2 and the rise of the Nazis is a huge component of many GCSE syllabi

Since when?
My DD (now 19) spent far far more time on the American west than the Nazi's and did nothing at all on the rise of the Nazi's in the late 20s early 30s, nothing about WW1, nothing about D Day, nothing about the Soviet union, nothing about the cold war or the formation of the EEC.
Plenty of time spent on ancient crap and how hard it was for early settlers to Oklahoma :(

No wonder she dropped the subject, it was a complete irrelevance.

DS was studying history until last year (pre gcse) and they definitely learned about the rise of the Nazis.

@ FenellaMaxwell

Absolutely agree. It Should be learnt and explained. It cannot happen again.
I have family members emprisoned and killed by the SS.
My grandmother knew people who were collaborating with the Vichy Government. It is part of our modern history.

Unfortunately there has been so many more genocide since in Turkey, in the ex Balkan, in Rwanda, in Mamnyar to name a few.

Those poor souls died for nothing if we forget them

My daughter (16) is currently doing GCSE History, and a huge component of the subject has been the rise of Nazi Germany.

DP and I have been to Munich several times, and last time, I said we should go to Dachau. It’s difficult to explain, but I felt it was the right thing to do, if only to pay our respects.

My lasting memories are of how badly people behaved there; posing for photos and taking selfies in the gas chamber, selfies in front of one of the ovens, and even two people having an argument outside on of the dormitories - one was shouting at the top of their voice. Just awful, and completely disrespectful.

If I was going to go anywhere similar, I’d have to go very early in the day or very late, because people are just fucking awful.

@cakeisalwaystheanswer really? You don't see any difference?

@jakinaboxx "history teacher here" doesn't make your opinions right or more valid than anyone else's. I'd hope my children's teachers have the ability to see all viewpoints and not just bulldoze through insisting that it's their way or the highway. You even proved Graphista's point whilst you argued with her when you said "It may be taught discretely".

I remember the teachers that had the most impact on me and they weren't the ones that came across like you do here.

Also, it's discreetly not discretely.

I suspect I disagree with jakinaboxx on quite a lot, but this is a case of the stupid English language having homophones.

"Discreetly" = opposite of ostentatiously
"Discretely" = opposite of continuous. She means they don't do a continuous block of teaching on it, just one-off lessons. Blink and you miss it, presumably.

Ahh, fair enough. That would make sense. Still proves Graphista's point. This is not the thread on which to be pedantic anyway, my bad.

DH visited one, before we met. He doesn’t talk about it much but I think it really had an effect on him.

I don’t think I could. I have a copy of ‘If this is a man’ by Primo Levi and I’ve never read it all in one go... it’s beyond words really. It’s also a very important book and I would recommend it to anyone looking for an account of the Holocaust, if that’s the right way to put it.

There’s nothing that can be said that hasn’t been said and that won’t sound banal. We all have our own limits and we all absorb information differently too, from different sources.

I am truly, honestly shocked by the photos posted earlier in the thread, of people jumping all over memorials and taking selfies. Appalling behaviour.

I took my eldest DD to Auschwitz before Christmas as part of a break we had in Krakow. It was certainly not to 'looked forward to' and we were both quite daunted on the way there but, as many people have said, you cannot appreciate the absolute horror and scale of the atrocities until you have walked on the platform as so many did towards what were the chambers; been inside a hut where women were kept, starving before being exterminated and seen the wall where people were systematically shot for no reason at all. It brings home how barbaric humans can be and how we must all try to stop this kind of behaviour.
Yes, it was upsetting and yes it was traumatic at times but these places will one day be no more and we cannot forget it

Interesting thread and interesting timing for me.
I agree with the OP. Im choosing not to visit a 'camp' next weekend. The rest of my group are going but I'm not. I don't want to because I don't think it will alter how I feel or how I act and, even though I'm not religious or spiritual in any way, I feel we should just leave the place in peace. I don't think my friends are wrong in wanting to visit but I don't think I'm wrong for not wanting to.

I understand why lots of posters are saying you can't understand the enormity of it all unless you have visited but how has this actually 'changed' anything. Before visiting would you have behaved differently?
Have you actually 'done' anything differently?

As mentioned by earlier PPs what about current issues such as the Chinese Muslim 're-education' camps?

Thinking about it I I'd rather give the money I would have spent visiting Auschwitz to a human rights charity that is dealing with current atrocities.

I had never had any intention of visiting any of. These places.
It's easy to say that you can appreciate the devastation of what happened without visiting these places, but until you visit how do you really know?

I went last year to accompany my daughter who felt drawn after visiting the London Holocaust museum with her school.
I was shocked by how many details I was unaware of despite being fairly well read on the subject and having seen films and documentaries .
I've now changed my view and agree with others that everyone should go.

You do not understand the true horror until you visit it in the flesh. Sorry Hollywood is a poor substitute.

Are you serious? What does Hollywood have to do with it? My grandparents, aunt and uncle survived concentration camps. Their stories and physical and emotional scars have told me enough. My gran told us about her being beaten and starved in the camp since wewere 8 yo. It wasn't just the life in the camps though, the prolonged mistreatment left them with lifelong physical disabilities and severe ptsd. I don't need to see a building to understand human suffering, I've seen the consequences firsthand.

I couldn't go. I just couldn't deal with it. Likewise with one of my DDs I think it would affect her too deeply; after having a survivor come to her school and talk about what she went through and how babies were murdered it took my DD a very, very long time to stop going over and over it both in her head and in conversations with me.

The tattoos on the arms of relations - now all dead - some of them in the camps as children, and hearing even a small part of their stories gives you a very strong image of what went on. A strong enough image to know that I couldn't deal with actually going there in person.

I did it as a teen as we were studying history at the time...we all felt sad afterwards but i rekon it's good to be aware.