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.

This is a good point I think. There are some total nuts out there who deny it happened

I don’t believe there are many people , if any, who don’t believe the holocaust happened. I bet 99% of Holocaust deniers say that it didn’t happen simply to get attention and to cause distress. Nasty bastards.

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

"Fascism: I sometimes fear...
I sometimes fear that
people think that fascism arrives in fancy dress
worn by grotesques and monsters
as played out in endless re-runs of the Nazis.

Fascism arrives as your friend.
It will restore your honour,
make you feel proud,
protect your house,
give you a job,
clean up the neighbourhood,
remind you of how great you once were,
clear out the venal and the corrupt,
remove anything you feel is unlike you...

It doesn't walk in saying,
"Our programme means militias, mass imprisonments, transportations, war and persecution.""
Michael Rosen.

It’s an act of witness and one o hope to do one day as I feel it’s a duty. I’m not looking forward to it .
Dh vetoed sachsenhausen when we were in Berlin but we did the Holocaust memorial museum. The family stories were so moving and the room of names , reading out the names of the victims so they are not forgotten. Yep that. A duty to hear them.

Ated. Absolutely.

That is so dispairingly sadly current.

i wont go, and i feel quite irritated by posters saying everyone must go and/or you cant understand it if you dont go.

some of my family were murdered in the holocaust, ive read and watched many, many factual accounts about it and visited vad yashem- please dont try to shame people into going.

Likewise please don't try to shame posters who find value in going and believe that it is important to do so.

i wouldnt dream of it

Helmet Please accept my sympathies for your family's lost loved ones.

I think that for those who have a 'personal connection' (if that's an acceptable way to put it) to the Holocaust, no visit is necessary. It's written on your family's collective heart and in your family's history. Of course, you don't need to visit!

Some of my friends' parents lost family and friends to the Holocaust. A friend's late father was the sole survivor of his entire family. I'd consider it an impertinence to suggest that any of them 'need' to visit. Just as they would consider it an impertinence to suggest to me that I visit Wounded Knee so I could 'really understand'.

But for many with no actual connection, a visit can make the reality of the Holocaust more 'real'. It can impress on one that it wasn't just newsreels and history lessons. But of course, it's an individual choice for each and every one of us.

i would definitely visit. i think this person has just chosen a poor turn of phrase , they obviously aren't rejoicing at the holocaust.

thats exactly how i feel, acrossthepond, thank you - (with betherabbits reminder that those who do need to visit are doing the right thing too.)

I would like to visit Aushwitz but not with the same feeling that I would have if I'd visit the Taj Mahal or Paris
I want to show my respect for what these poor people went through. Acknowledgment of this terrible period of history is just something I want to do.
Other posters have said that they were glad that they went.

I am going in April to Auschwitz. I know it's going to be harrowing but I want to see it for myself. I want to pay money so they can continue to preserve it as a horrific reminder. I want to take some time to pay respects to all those thousands of people.

It’s slightly offensive to infer those of us that wouldn’t want to visit are holocaust deniers or the sort that would not speak up for the communists etc . I am deeply affected by it I find it unbearable I watched the beginning of a survivors testimony on a recent Netflix documentary and cannot get what was said out of my mind as it involves a girl the same age as my dd so turned it off. I think visiting a death camp is ghoulish I think it’s an odd thing to do on a holiday and certainly don’t think you need to visit to appreciate the horror.

I'm not sure that I am emotionally strong enough to visit a concentration camp, but I visited the Anne Frank House and found it sombre, inspirational and devastating all at once.

I visited Cologne a few years ago, where I first encountered the Stolperstein.
The thing they really brought home to me was how utterly integrated (for the most part) those deported were, woven into every street.
I'm not sure I would be brave enough to hide people, and I profoundly hope I never have need to find out, but the ones I don't understand, are those who denounced their neighbours. People they knew, children they knew.
When people can use an ideology to justify killing children, they are utterly lost.
In the eighties I lived for a long time in a suburb which had a number of large Jewish communities, from ultra-orthodox and Lubavitcher to extra-reform and everything in between.
The number of little old ladies and little old men I saw with numbers on their arms is the reason I nearly lose my temper when hearing some fuckwit bleating about the Shoah being fictional.
I want to visit Ravensbruck one day. I'm not sure if I'm strong enough for the others.

MrsTP completely agree it’s seriously worrying what our dc are NOT being taught.

@jakinaboxx that’s absolutely not what I’m hearing from friends who’s dc are being educated in the English/welsh system and certainly not my experience of it either. What do you mean by “discretely”? If the meaning implied by that spelling of the word then it’s not a separate issue politics connects to everything, if you meant “discreetly” then that’s also worrying as it should be a key part of the education system not a subtle and downplayed bolt on!

“Blink and you miss it, presumably.” That’s what I’m thinking too.

What’s a “drop down day”?

Also history isn’t compulsory past 14 I believe? So are the children taking history up to that point being taught:

Our colonial and empirical history with all the atrocities and shame that includes?
The causes of wwi and wwii?
European history since wwii, the aftermath of wwii?
The Cold War?
NATO and the UN?
The European Union and how it came to be and why?

Because when I talk to my friends and family (several of whom are teachers themselves I should note) and their dc about these things the children are pretty much oblivious and these are for the most part studious, conscientious pupils.

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. very well said

And we STILL have posters spouting “we should stop it happening again” when it HAS and IS happening all over the world, today

AND we (our govt yes but also individual brits) are still complicit or actively involved in persecuting people for their race, culture, religion, sexuality, health status (the sick and disabled), lack of wealth...

See it ON HERE numerous times a day.

“in western society” wow! Way to prove mine and others point! Why is “western society” important is everyone else not?

I’m sure you wrote that thoughtlessly but it belies your true feelings.

It's about you as an individual and the ripples you make in your daily life. absolutely

...be awful not to visit Auschwitz whilst being so close, almost like ignoring that it had happened.

Thigh I wouldn't use the word awful, it did seem more as though it would require a conscious decision NOT to go, rather than to go, when it's such an obvious place to visit when in the area. And choosing not to go seemed to be a disrespectful cop out.

And to those who say 'well I've read about it/seen it in tv', etc, it's not the same. When your there, it's real. Real in a whole different way. As a family, we each had that reality moment in different places. For me it was a display of suitcases, one of which had a surname painted on that was my grandfather's surname. For my late DH it was a display of photos of children, one of which featured two girls of our daughters age, standing up very straight in that serious way that young children do when they're told their photo is going to be taken. Only the photo wasn't being taken by loving parents, but by people who were either planning to experiment on them, or had other plans to harm them. And that photo in situ had so much more power than a photo in a book or on TV.

I don't say that everyone should go. But I don't consider visiting it to be ghoulish, at all.