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.

My first visit to Auschwitz was back in 2003, we were part of a group that met up with a survivor whilst there. He was our guide and regularly took school groups on tours of the camp. His whole family had been murdered. He did this because he felt he had to tell his story. This wasn't grief tourism but a chance to hear a first hand account before his generation are gone. We stood on the infamous 'ramp' at Birkenau as he talked about the last time he saw his family. He wanted people to hear him. His name is Arek Hersch and he's still alive.

I couldn't go to Auschwitz, because I went to Dachau a few years ago and that was bad enough, but I understand why people want to go there. I've got a friend who did March of the Living, for instance. A-Level History students did a trip to Auschwitz and one of my mates who went said it gave him nightmares.

I do think some people are ghoulish but tbf it is a huge part of European history. And I'm more disgusted by the fact Holocaust deniers go on tours of the camps and interrupt the tour guides with 'well actually it didn't happen' or whatever.

I haven't been to any of the concentration camps but I have been to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. That was interesting and very sad.

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

It's not one or the other. There is a huge amount of documentary evidence - survivor accounts, eyewitness accounts, Nuremberg testimony, film and photographs.

If people need to actually go to those places, and even go to 'several', to fully understand the enormity of what happened then they must have a serious lack of empathy

Have you been @NoCountry ?

@jakinaboxx what a sad story. The lady I met managed to escape before she was captured but her stories of hatred made me sad. Her parents however didnt surivive and she never saw them again. I can't imagine listening to someone who had witnessed that.

I went to Auschwitz in the winter. It was very surreal and almost felt like a film set. It was incredibly unnerving to see all the hair, glasses, shoes. It really showed the enormity of what happened.

How much do we have to know about the details to assimilate and anderstand the enormity of such atrocities?

My mother loves to read True Crime types stuff, gratuitous and graphic depictions of grisley murders- she claims it is "educational".

As a child she was fascinated by events in WWII detainment camps. Torture, experimentation, abuse, I rememeber as an 8 year old she would read chapters from a book on long car journies which detailed horrific events at concentration camps.
I would put my fingers in my ears.

I am not naiive.
We need to know these things. But I would not visit a concentration camp.

jakinaboxx

I said earlier on that I would never set foot in such a place and I think they should all be destroyed.

I visited Belsen as a teenager during an exchange visit over thirty years ago, and as part of a larger group comprised of both German and British teenagers. Everyone behaved respectfully throughout, and it was both affecting and thought provoking. We talked about it together while were there and afterwards, not because we were expected to, but because we wanted to. It left a deep impression upon us, and a shared sense that something so evil should never be allowed to happen again. I think that is the testament of such places and probably why people should continue to visit them.

Then you have no idea @NoCountry

I went to Auschwitz-Birkenau when I was at uni. I went with a group of friends who wanted to go, I hadn’t really given it much thought.

It was awful. Extremely sobering. The experience has definitely stayed with me. I often think about it in all the recent discussions about how anti-semitism is on the rise again.

I think it’s important that people go, and I also think that it’s important that the sites are kept to remember. I’ve seen too many comments on social media about how the Holocaust never happened or the scale was exaggerated to think that it’s safe to get rid of the proof.

I've been to Auschwitz-Birkeneau and across the Plasow firlds.. It's horribly fascinating and I know that sounds disturbing.
I just can't believe that something so horrendous can happen at that scale - not really that long ago.

I do believe it's a place that everyone should experience (as a tourist) once for history's sake.
I'll happily visit Poland again but it's never on my list to return to that camp. Once is more than enough.
Numbingly mind-blowing.

It’s somewhere I feel I ought to go, as a human being, to bear witness to what human beings are capable of doing to each other given the right set of circumstances. Circumstances that could be, and are, quite easily replicated since.
I would ban cameras there tbh. You go, you see, you take it in without putting it a step away from you by viewing it through a screen.
A colleague went a couple of years ago. She didn’t take any photos, as she said there are plenty to see in books and online and she didn’t view any of it as a photographable moment - it should be much deeper than that.

I agree, Boudicabooandbulldogs Until you have visited you really don’t understand the scale and coldness of the processing. I’m not sure looking forward or enjoying are the right words but certainly haunting or even life changing.
It would be very disrespectful not to encourage future generations to benefit from the lessons visiting can offer. Without the learning there is no remembering with honour. If the world loses the learning around tolerance of difference, greed and doing nothing then the Nazis have another win.
My children all went with the Holocaust Education Trust on a programme aimed at developing learning in the participants but more importantly, sharing the learning. They must have been fifth form or lower sixth. It had a very profound impact on each of them and validated their career choices.
I would go as far as to suggest not coping with it is a normal reaction and is no reason not to attend. You’d have to be pretty hardened to not shed tears and to have a few sleepless nights. We should feel more than a little uncomfortable when confronted with the realities of war and genocide. We’re meant to find it horrifying.

I don't think they should be destroyed. They should be preserved as a reminder and open for those who wish to visit.

Won't be me though.

@willothewispa
Obviously they’re not theme parks. Ffs.

Yes. I’d really like to go to one of them. It isn’t likely as I’m disabled and chronically ill. There are plenty of things I’d really like to do and experience but can’t because of my limitations.

My gf liberated one of the camps. Of course I’d really like to see a fraction of what he saw. Especially as I never met him. I used to live in Germany and have quite a connection to the country, language and have am very interested in the Holocaust.

I struggle to understand why you find my desire to visit a camp particularly offensive and am outraged by your ridiculous judgment.

"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"
I appreciate the enormity of it without going. It is because I appreciate the enormity of it that I will not go. Ever.

Having visited the holocaust museum in Washington DC I am not sure I would visit these sites, I was extremely upset after the visit at the horror of it all. That said it must not be allowed to happen again and it’s right they are a museum for those who wish to visit and understand the horror.

I have seen a couple of celebrities visit a former prison in Cambodia that was used during the way in the 70,s as horrendous as it was, both programmes were informative and the people were glad they had been. They need to be there and we need to go,. It can happen again and hopefully these places will stop people getting such extreme views.

Seeing Auschwitz made me have a real how lucky am I moment. I didn’t go to enjoy it. I went to understand and say a prayer for those who had to endure it.

My H went to Poland on a work trip and was told that the Polish people are ashamed of the death camps and never went neat them.

People always trot that out, as if it hadn't already been repeated.

@NoCountry, I agree and I'm interested in what you've said on the thread.

There is a powerful book about the Rwandan genocide by writer for The New Yorker, Philip Gourevitch. The book is called We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families. In the book Gourevitch describes standing on the Mall in Washington DC in April 1994, and buying a newspaper from one of those kiosks. The front page was awash with images of the genocide unfolding in Rwanda. He looked up and saw the usual long queue of people waiting to enter the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, under the 'Never Again' banner that hangs over the entrance.

As he asks, what is the point of all this memory work? Maybe the best way of commemorating these events is to take action against present day atrocities and human rights violations. Though God knows that sounds trite too! And at times also impossible.

There's also a whole body of literature on the phenomenon of dark tourism.

I went to Auschwitz & Birkenau in November.
I was visiting Krakow & wanted to pay my respects to the more than 1 million people who were murdered there.
I had studied a lot about the Holocaust & read several books on Auschwitz & thought I knew it all but nothing really prepares you for how it really is.

The most upsetting parts for me were firstly seeing Black Wall where 1000s of people were shot & the rooms where the victims were sentenced & had to strip.
And when my friend & me were directed into a room in Crematorium 1 in the main camp... then I saw hundreds & hundreds of fingernail marks on the walls & the holes in the ceiling.. it was the gas chamber where we were stood & it was devastating.
Then seeing the cut off plaits of hair in an exhibit on top of a roll of material made from dead women's hair....
The basement of Block 11 was a deeply unpleasant place but then hundreds of people died down there. I felt like I had a weight on my chest while I was down there especially when I saw the tiny standing cells.
Walking down the Ramp at Birkenau realising that for 100s of thousands of people it was the last steps they ever took.

But the other disturbing things of the trip for me??

Firstly the giggling teens plus the selfie taking tourists yards from the sites of Crematoriums 2 & 3 in Birkenau. WTAF was in their heads.

Secondly the many cartoonish effigies of Jews holding coins I saw for sale in the cheaper tourist shops in Krakow.

I will visit Krakow again as it was a lovely safe place, maybe in the future one day I will visit the site of some other camp if I am nearby.
But I will never forget Auschwitz Birkenau & it has definitely had an effect on my friend & me. Only go if you feel mentally strong enough & please do not go if it's just one more thing to tick off the bucket list.

CherryPavlova

We all have different levels of sensitivity though.
Some people bluster through life without a care or thought for others. Some people feel empathy on a very deep level.
We don't all need to visit these places to have some appreciation of the magnitude and horror of the events.