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.

its a museum and it must never happen again.

It is a museum as well as tangible evidence of the horrors perpetrated there. But genocides have taken place since and are happening as we speak in Sudan, myanmar and Syria.
The worthwhile aim to encourage visits to concentration camps and in marking holocaust day is to learn from these atrocities. But we haven’t and we won’t. Under our sophisticated veneer we are still mammals with the same territorial drive and shunning of those we see as threats or outsiders.

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.

I agree. A lot of people claim "we mustn't forget, and it can never happen again" without understanding it. Too many people think that it was just about Germans and Jews. It wasn't. For one, it was the Nazi's, not all the Germans (and not only Germans), and two, it wasn't just Jews either, but also gypsy's, mentally disabled people and gay people. And it happens again and again. Rwanda, yugoslavia, ISIS and who knows what the exact deal is with the camps in North Korea. People still don't understand it, it's about the mind set that brought this about, not the certain people.

I visited Oświęcim/Auschwitz with DW some years ago when we were staying in Kraków.

It was truly awful, seeing the horrors that humans can inflict on other humans, but I'm glad we went. I will never go there again, but I think people should visit, to see what it's like and in memory of those who suffered.

We considered it when we visited Berlin, but in the end, decided it wasn't really appropriate. Instead we visited the Jewish war memorial and the war museum. We'd previously a war museum/memorial in Jerusalem. More recently, we visited the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam.

Our son studied Weimar/Hitler as part of his GCSE history, so it all dove-tailed in with his studies. We really didn't feel like gawping at the concentration camps where the atrocities happened - just didn't seem right to treat it like a theme park. It was enough for us to know what had happened and how it had been allowed to happen - the museums etc served that purpose better for us.

Too many people think that it was just about Germans and Jews

Indeed, the Jews were persecuted in many countries and over many centuries. Even in Britain back as far as 1190 Jews sought refuse in York's Clifford Tower to protect themselves from a mob of anti-Jewish crusaders.

For Hitler, the Jews were a convenient scape-goat upon whom to blame Germany's woes at that time.

the raise of anti-semitism in this country in 2019 - 2020 now - is very worrying...

@jasjas1973 your daughter obviously did School's History Project and the American West option. Syllabus B was modern world under the old scheme. Notice I said 'many' not all.

Absolutely agree that it's the mindset that allowed this to happen that we have to look at.

It goes much deeper than the actual camps that people ended up in.

Genocide didn't stop when the camps were emptied, and humans have been finding the cruelest ways they can to torture and murder other people since time began; it seems to be part of the human psyche.

Unfortunately, people going to look at these camps and declaring how awful is was isn't going to change that.

And in truth, unless you've actually lived through something like that you can never come close to having any idea just how horrendous it actually was.

Indeed, the Jews were persecuted in many countries and over many centuries. Even in Britain back as far as 1190 Jews sought refuse in York's Clifford Tower to protect themselves from a mob of anti-Jewish crusaders

My Mother remembers going to war even as anti-Semitism was reaching a high in London. No one knew about the Jewish people or cared. They were equally as despised in England. She cannot articulate why.

I visited with school, aged 13. I think back then none of us could grasp the extent of what was it about. So i'm not sure its good that it has been turned into tourist attraction.

As a Jew, trips to places commemorating the Holocaust are something we grow up having group trips to.

Certainly not true of all Jews, as I can attest to.

Actually this thread has made me aware even more of why I would never want to go to any such place.

I assumed people were going there to be sanctimoniously solemn without genuinely caring and without actually learning any 'lesson'.

Reading on here that people are posing by gas ovens or even getting in them, I thought I was beyond being shocked but clearly not

You can see the lack of respect just by looking at the entrance on google earth. Coaches parked by the dozen immediately outside, people wandering round with carrier bags of snacks and gathering outside the entrance smoking

Reading on here that people are posing by gas ovens or even getting in them, I thought I was beyond being shocked but clearly not

I've been in places where they have tortured or burned witches and people have treated it as a side-show - lots of pictures being taken of girlfriends in the dunking chair for example. Disgusting.

My daughter has an Austrian friend (I'll call her Sophie) - one of Sophie's great-grandfathers was in the SS.

Her parents have taken her to Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and Dachau several times throughout her childhood.

I think Germans and Austrians are better at confronting the dark parts of their history than we are - it's only in the last few years, after all, that Britain has had a slavery museum, documenting our role in the slave trade.

I think it's actually quite important to see. I learned a lot about the camps during my history GCSE and A Level, and we as the human race need to make sure that it is not repeated.

I would very, very much like to visit, but I am prepared for the emotion and long term effects that such a visit might have.

What I cannot stand is people who take selfies outside and then post them on Facebook. Just no. Have some respect, not everything is for you to get "likes" on social media.

I've been to Dachau and the Holocaust Museum in Berlin.
I found the latter particularly effective. Even the architecture of the place contributed to the emotional squeeze, never mind the actual exhibits.(I cant think of a better word than squeeze, the gradual constriction, the loss, the sense of being shunted down a path and finally trapped. )

I'm reminded of Micheal Rosens poem
Goes something like
Fascism arrives as your friend, will clean the streets,
Give jobs, make you proud......
It doesn't arrive and tell you it ends up in militias, deportation and death.

Theres full time propaganda being pumped out about to individuals about clean streets, cracking down on undesirable. Individuals are attracted to this clean streets and low crime etc etc. Who wouldn't be.
The Never Forget motto is to show where this can lead.
The museums and camps are powerful counter messages to the onslaught of propaganda.

Me or you cant walk into North Korea and unlock the gates of the camps.

We can vote at home, we can be aware of the dangers of being too seduced by certain messages, watching out for the shadow side being hidden. Hopefully enough of us will do that so we never go too far down that awful road that we cant turn back.

@JasonPollack it is very rude and unreasonable of you to accuse me of "fake outrage" over the Holocaust. I can't think of many issues more upsetting and sensitive.

I was not the poster who made the "correlation" point.

I think you are justified in drawing a comparison with the refugee crisis, although it is not the same.

I felt your comment however was minimising the Holocaust by depicting it as just another bad thing in a world full of bad things.

If you think people go there to get a kick out of misery then you have a sick mind. I've visited Belsen, I wanted to pay my respects to all of the victims. It is important we NEVER forget which is why the few remaining survivors are keen to share their stories with young people today while they still can.

Too many people think that it was just about Germans and Jews

I know people are shocked when I tell them a third of the Gypsy population of Europe was rounded up and first taken to concentration camps in the early thirties. Then moved to death camps in the forties, some lasting until the very last were all killed together on one night. A total of 5,000 women and children. They were considered as untouchables by the Nazis, lower than Jews in the social hierarchy, kept separate and branded with a "Z"
We also need to remember the people taken for experiments, the disabled who were considered a burden and useless to them.

I visited Auschwitz two years ago and someone asked the tour guide why it was open, and how she could do the job she did. She said that it was deeply important for people to visit and see what was done rather than just hearing about it, and she hopes that it means history will never be repeated.
I don’t think it’s something to enjoy or look forward to. It took me a few days to shake off the heavy feeling and I still think about it often. There were a group of schoolchildren laughing in the gas chamber with their teacher desperately trying to shush them and I was furious - I don’t think it’s an appropriate place for kids to be as they clearly don’t appreciate the gravity of the visit.
Having said that a woman asked me to take her picture posing next to one of the blocks and I said no, it was inappropriate. She didn’t seem bothered, just asked someone else. Depressing.

I think it's important to remember what happening all of the people who were sent to those places. Never more than in these times, when some dodgy ideas are creeping back in.

I have ancestors who died in Nazi concentration camps, I feel I should go, to honor thema nd their suffering. I think as many as possible should visit these sites, to let the horror and reality of it all wash over them, feel horrified, feel distraught. It is the only way to prevent it happening again.

I can see how 'looking forward to it' can come across abit odd but I'm going to Krakow and will be going to the concentration camp there and I absolutely love history and think it's so important to learn about so I am looking forward to the guided tour around and learning about the history even though I will be really sad at the same time. I suppose it's hard to understand if you don't have an interest in those kind of things!

The tour guide saying she feels it’s important for people to visit and she hopes history will never be repeated.
I agree with her but visits to the camps are not preventing genocides. There are current ones in Sudan, Myanmar, the Yazidis in Syria. It’s too late to say never again as genocides have happened since and are still happening. Not in the same sick industrialised hell that the Nazis developed but evil and terrible nonetheless.