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.

Completely everyone should visit and pay their respects.
It can only be understood by seeing it and being there, it's harrowing beyond all imagination, which is why it must be seen.
I went, my family are of Russian Jewish descent and it felt right to be there and to feel the horror, it felt as tho it was the least I could do.

I’ve been to Auschwitz. It was one of the worst things I have ever experienced. I’m glad I went; for all the reasons above. Yes, I understood the horrors, but it’s not the same as seeing it for yourself.
But I wish some people were more respectful and didn’t treat them like tourist attractions.

My grandad liberated camps in Austria. He never spoke about it.
I think that I would be unable to cope with looking too deeply into it.

I was in Bergen in Germany for a family wedding and went along with a few family members to visit Bergen Belsen. I had read about and watched various accounts of the Holocaust but nothing really prepares you for your feelings when you get there. You can almost feel the sense of loss.
It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea, (many of the wedding party didn't go and their choice was respected) but I think if you can go for the right reasons, to remember and commemorate those many people who suffered there, at the very place they died, then you should.

Those who go to post all over the internet for abit of attention are clearly not going for that reasons. Saw a couple having a selfie in front of Anne Franks memorial, smiles slapped across their faces like it was some sort of circus ! Most distasteful thing I've ever witnessed actually.

I would really like to get the courage to go.
I went to see the one where my family members were sent and I couldn't do it. I couldn't go in. Years later, I wish I had. But it was just too hard at the time.
Looking forward to it... not words I'd use to describe a day out at Auschwitz.
I don't think it's ghoulish in the least. I think as people, we are insatiably curious about the dark side of our humanity. Our mistakes are the very things that teach us, mostly. We have to remember not to make the same ones again.
I was actually thinking of the Middle East, Syria, etc. The soil over there must hum with sorrow. In a way, when we visit such places, the death camps and the like, it is our way of honouring what others before us went through. It is, in my view, not ghoulish, but an homage to those who suffered, a time of reflection,.

My daughter will be going later this year as part of her School options and as she has German/Jewish heritage I think it's even more important she goes. It's not going to be fun but it is going to be life changing

I went to Auschwitz-Birkenau on a school trip when I was 16. It remains one of the most powerful and disturbing places I have ever visited and I can still remember it vividly even though it was nearly 30 years ago.

I agree with pps who say everyone should go.

I think it's really weird.

Platitudes about ensuring "it" never happens again completely ignore the reality of the world. How many people have drowned in the Med in recent years?

I agree with the sentiments of FenellaMaxwell . I visited S21 and the Killing Fields and it was very moving and sobering to think that this all happened in my parent's lifetime.

I completely agree that selfie taking and inappropriate comments are gross and it's a real shame because it means that those visitors haven't really grasped the reality or purpose of those sites being open to the public.

I wanted to go last year, but didn't as our youngest was 8 and was too young - we did stay in the Jewish quarter of Krakow and even just seeing things like the Ghetto Square Chair memorial made you think about the enormity of it all and what it must have been like

It's remembering what happened so you don't repeat mistakes of the past

I think it's a duty for many to go and face the truth!

People deny it even happened, witnesses are disappearing due to their age, there's nothing ghoulish in respecting the martyrs and the ones who fought so hard to stay alive and bear witness.

There might be a few idiots who "gets a kick out of it" but YABY to put every visitor in the same bag.

Not knowing much and be ready to learn is not disrespectful either.

I went to Auschwitz a couple of years ago, and although it was harrowing I appreciated it for all the above reasons. However, I was really shocked when an American couple were actually taking smiling photos of each other next to the ovens. Horrendous.

I think it should be mandatory for everyone to go

Why this horror? Should it also be mandatory for everyone to go to the genocide memorials and mass graves in Rwanda?

People recite "never again" all the time, and then trot off and participate in offering about "benefit scroungers" or "illegal immigrants" or whoever the latest scapegoated segment of society is. Behaviour like that is what created the environment where the holocaust could occur.

Platitudes about ensuring "it" never happens again completely ignore the reality of the world. How many people have drowned in the Med in recent years?

I may be being very obtuse, but I fail to see the correlation between organised death camps that exterminated thousands on the basis of their religion, their ethnicity, their sexuality, their physical or mental challenges, and the also very harrowing and distressing deaths of those poor souls seeking to flee terrible situations in the Med?

*othering not offering

Behaviour like that is what created the environment where the holocaust could occur.

That I completely agree with. That's why I think it's important to do as much as one can to completely understand the reality and the enormity of the potential end result.

@user7522689 All atrocities should be remembered and learned from, and all life lost is horrific, however we are talking about genocide committed on an unimaginable scale, in which most countries in Europe either suffered huge losses or were complicit. It’s not the same.

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

Seems like one of those things people say without any real meaning. Of course you can appreciate the enormity of it without going.

I’m not sure I’m strong enough to go. I’m already haunted by the books I’ve read and the films I’ve watched and for some reason as I’ve gotten older I’ve become even more sensitive to the sheer horror of it all.

My mums best friend was in a concentration camp. She managed to escape with her mother when they were transporting them from one camp to another in a cattle train. That’s all I know because she refused to go into any detail, although I only asked her about it once when I was doing a school project.

She has passed away now but I was so in awe of her. She was literally the wisest woman I ever met. When you survive something like that, surely nothing could ever scare you ever again. She really really enjoyed life, was an amazing cook, welcomed everybody into her home and she knew how to PARTY. She just had the best attitude to life.

It worries me that as those generations die out their stories will die with them. I’ll be sure to pass them on to my daughter, but I’m not sure it will hit home and have the same visceral quality as talking to someone who actually went through it. Although I think the films and novels do a pretty good job.

I went to Buchenwald when I was 14, more than 2 decades ago now, on a school exchange trip. I can honestly say I still think of what I saw and heard/read there on a weekly basis at least. The total horror of what people are capable of doing to each other is without limits and I agree it is a place where you are confronted with the violence of war and a person should feel changed by the experience.

I feel quite afraid of people who visit concentration camps and post selfies with the sites. Do these people have no empathy?

Millions, not thousands. Pardon.

It’s the most important thing I feel like I’ve ever done. You cannot appreciate the horror and enormity if it until you’ve actually been to one. I think all school should take kids there to feel it. I will be taking mine. Even when I was at school, only 10 years ago, a lot of my class mates had clue what the holocaust was and I was horrified. It should not be forgotten.

I can't visit. I went to Berlin, and found that so upsetting just as a city. I found the whole city just overwhelming with pain.

DS has just got back from a school trip and was completely silent for two days. I was really worried that something had happened that he want telling me about, but I think that he was just overwhelmed too.

I’m not sure Jeremy Corbyn learned much from his visit to Terezin concentration camp.

@JasonPollack are you seriously describing the Holocaust as "the realities of the world"?

Disgusting.