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.

I went to Auschwitz-Birkenau with friends whilst on Erasmus. I recommend to everyone to go. It is not a fun experience, or certainly shouldn't be, but the size of the camps, the piles of clothing, shoes, hair, the gas chambers ... dear God. Going with other Europeans too was fascinating, as you realise how narrow our curriculum is, concentrating only on the impact of WWII on the British people. How precarious life was in occupied countries. There was an utterly horrific moment where my friend pointed out that out of our little group, i would have probably been the only "safe" person had we lived during the war (due to sexuality, political views and religion/race). That and seeing an American Jewish tour group wandering round in special jackets declaring the name of their tour/date etc. with a yellow band with the star of David on the arm. I'm not Jewish so maybe I am missing something, and I suppose they probably had relatives that suffered and died there, but it seemed so horribly insensitive and shocking.

I don't think the fact that these sites cannot in themselves eradicate hatred and racism is an argument for destroying them.

Churches haven't conquered evil

Beautiful landscapes and great art haven't enable humanity to stop destructive behaviour either.

But if even a proportion of visitors to such sites gain in their understanding of the past - and use the experience to reflect on the present, then the endeavour is worthwhile.

I don't understand what is the difference between visiting a concentration camp and visiting the 9/11 Memorial. When we took the DCs to NY we made a point of going to show respect and to remember what happened. Is visiting ground zero also wrong?

I find the comments saying that these camps should not exist chilling but unfortunately not surprising.

I don’t think I could go. My husband is Jewish (I’m not). I think I’d find it all too close to home and devastating.

His family emigrated to America in the 1920s. A few years ago we celebrated the 100th birthday of one of my husband’s great uncles. There was a slideshow. In one of the slides, a large contingent of the family in NYC held up a photograph of the family remaining in Poland, and vice versa. It was distressing to know that the 30-odd family members left in Poland died in the death camps.

Every child in senior school in every country should be made to go to them, it's only when people forget that it will happen all over again.

I wouldn't be able to go, I find the idea of the Holocaust so overwhelming I wouldn't be able to cope. Going to the Imperial Way Museum was bad enough, I cried the entire time I was on the floor dedicated to it.

People visiting to pay theirs respects are fine. People visiting to be disrespectful idiots is not fine.

I visited the Jersey Underground hospital when it first opened after the war and it was just full of rubble and exactly how it was left.
I visited the graves and memorials associated with Dunkirk and the attacks on the Bridges over the Rhine and other major areas through Northern France, Holland and Belgium.
At each location you sense an overwhelming feeling of death and despair. You feel as though you have been hit by an express train of emotion and cannot see any way out of it. You look at writings and comments in the books of remembrance and ingest those words. You feel for those that died. The quietness and solemnity are oververly emotional and you will leave with a different perspective on life.

One thing that does concern me a little is that large numbers of people traipsing around a historic site will inevitably damage it. I don't necessarily think that going there in person is the only way to find out about it- Auschwitz has an online virtual tour, for example.

There is also a danger that it does become just another tourist stop, and that's hideous. I don't think the selfie-obsessed idiots are a new phenomenon though, every generation has had it's vacuous dimwits.

@Patroclus

I think it's one of the most powerful poems in existence - the way he combines his pride in his Russian identity with his hatred of antisemitism, along with his protest at the Soviet Union's inadequate recognition of Babi Yar.

At Yalta, Churchill and Roosevelt carved up europe and sent back 10s of 1000s to deaths at the hands of the Soviets.
The Polish peoples suffered enormously under both the Nazis and then the Soviets, its little wonder they get slightly sensitive about their role in assisting the Nazis.
Failure to collaborate would have meant instance death, how many of us would have stood firm and died a terrible death?
I mean the Daily Mail and most of the political classes were very sympathetic to Hitler in the 30s, Lady Astor was a raging anti semite, praising Hitler's "solution" to the jewish problem, that didn't stop May and Johnson unveiling a statue to her just last month!!!!

There has never been a more suitable time to visit these camps. Neo Natziism is increasing throughout Europe and we are heading the same way as Germany in around 1933.
I don't expect everyone to see this on a daily basis if they don't go out of their way to study it, but it's scary times for ethnic minorities.
The UK is no exception we have our own share of racism, discrimination and it's increasing. I can't help but see the irony in not voting in a candidate because he was supposedly racist, and supporter of terrorists, for an overt racist who immediately supports a terrorist act. Hmm.

In Germany it is mandatory for teenage school children to both visit and learn about the camps. They face the past honestly, and obviously they believe it's of vital importance to learn from it. I wonder what they would think of the suggestion of destroying the camps?

For what it's worth I too lived where several other posters have lived. It makes a difference in perspective.

Interestingly, and I had forgotten, I visited one of the camps just a few days before part of it was burnt down by neo nazis denying that the holocaust actually took place.

I won’t even watch schindlers list so no way could I visit concentration camps. I agree with OP. I maybe understand why people with a connection might want to visit, it must be so upsetting and depressing though - I wonder why people put themselves through that. It’s macabre.

I would not go. I find looking at the pictures almost impossible. Visiting is not something I could cope with. As a teenager, I read Lord Russell of Liverpool’s “The Scourge of the Swastika”. It gave me nightmares for months. I have never been brave enough to read the companion volume on Japanese War Crimes.

I went to Dachau at 18 when I was inter-railing with my best friend. We also visited Anne Frank's house which is also very moving. Although I am not, I grew up in a majoritively jewish area and a lot of my friends are jewish. Dachau was very moving and sad, and important for me as a human being (and politically for the rest of my life) to understand the enormity of the Nazi extermination programme and the context of my friends' history. Its not way out in the countryside like Auschwitz but in the suburbs of Munich. It made obvious the lie that German's didn't know what was going on. In Munich they were living right next to it.

Consequently I wouldn't go now and wouldn't look forward to it. No fictionalised film will ever touch for one moment on the cold hard horror of it. And I'm sure some people today don't really understand the extent of the horror.

It's terribly upsetting but we have a duty to the dead. It's something everyone should consider doing - however sad you may find it, you weren't there. You didn't have your family ripped away or fight for your life every day.

I visited with my sister in my early twenties and it still haunts me. Until you have visited you have no understanding on how utterly traumatising it must have been, a film doesn't even begin to cut it.

There's an air of Auschwitz that utterly indescribable, it's the same as the air in the Anne Frank museum and the Topography of Terror in Berlin and I imagine the same as other sights of genocide. We must continue to visit if only to educate ourselves.

I haven't been to Auschwitz but I have been to the killing fields and torture sites in Cambodia.

I was with a young, fun, big group of backpackers from various nations. We visited everything together, chatting and wandering around. Except for the school the Khmer Rouge used to torture people. That place was different. We all, without speaking about it, split off from each other, walked around alone, couldn't meet each other's eyes. There was a room with a bed in it. Bare, metal bed. I can't think about it now without a physical reaction.

I had read the books and seen the films and I spoke to Cambodians. But that room did something else.

Did it make me better, or would I resist more if my country went that way? I hope so. I doubt it but I hope so.

I’ve actually saw someone on my social media checking in at Auschwitz which is just incredibly wrong and insensitive. I work with a lot of early 20 somethings and a lot of them go weekend breaks to Poland and treat the concentration camps as a tick off tourist attraction rather than realising the absolute horror and evil and terror that went on there . It saddens me that they take pictures of themselves there .

I think if the survivors themselves insist it remains then their opinion is the most important one

I thought I understood it

Then I visited Auschwitz Birkenau whilst in Kraków and realised I really didn't. It was completely harrowing but also very moving, especially listening to a group of Jewish families singing softly in memory of loved ones

Have also been to the Holocaust centre in Nottinghamshire (school trips) That is more about what happened before the war; very interesting but not as physically awful as actually visiting the death camps so an option for younger children to start an understanding of the situation. They still have people there who went through it and came over on the kinder trains and you can hear them speak and ask questions - really worth a visit

I would never go and think it’s ghoulish. I walked out of Schindlers list. I literally cannot bear it

Every child in senior school in every country should be made to go to them, it's only when people forget that it will happen all over again.

Well, we'd be looking for donations from NZ to get our kids over here.

It was hard enough to get the guys over that fought and died in the war. And of course, the nurses. And horses.

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.

Haven’t been to any of the camps, but the Holocaust museum in Washington DC is an excellent museum.

Completely devastating but excellent at communicating the horror of the holocaust.

I haven't been but it is something that I've felt for a long while that I've felt I want to do, especially since going to the Anne Frank house which was incredibly moving. Having felt the atmosphere there I can only imagine how Auschwitz feels.