Children at Auchwitz

[JuvenileBigfoot]

I went to Auchwitz yesterday. There was a family on our tour with 2 young children. 6ish and 3ish. I was pretty surprised to see them to be honest. Even taking away where we actually were, it was a 2 hour coach ride each way and 4 hours of walking around. The little one had reached her limit before we even got through security and had a meltdown. And then walked around with her mum's phone during the tour. She also fell over a few times on the uneven ground. Her dad was then getting annoyed that she was crying and whinging.

And then.... well, we all know what happened there. The 6 year old did seem very interested but I think there's a bit more of a child friendly way to teach about the holocaust without being there, surrounded by horror. It was a lot even for the adults. Several people cried, some had to walk out of some of the exhibits. It just felt like it was a bit much. And who knows how much the little one took in. The parents started off with the ear phones on her, listening to the guide who did NOT hold back on the details (and nor should he)

Lastly, on a selfish level, it was very distracting having a whiny 3 year old there.

Overall it just didn't seem appropriate.

AIBU?

I don't think anyone would actually think that is a suitable place to take small children, but clearly not everyone thinks that! But then I'm baffled by the people who take selfies etc there.
Purely selfishly it would irritate me as it's a distraction and I'd want to be able to concentrate without small child noise. But I'm grumpy and old 😂

The reality is different cultures will have different opinions. A friend who grew up a very short distance away, brought her children once they could walk.

Her grandchildren now living in Ireland were brought there as young children also. She considers it her duty to bring them.

I would assume it was something the adults wanted to do and the children were there by default, rather than meant as a day out for the children.

I guess it's each parents decision on how they tackle difficult and upsetting parts of history with their children. Would I be inclined to actually bring a child - no probably not until they're older but as you say, different people will have different approaches to how much we shield our children from and in what way we teach them about the darker parts of humanity.

I must admit I feel there are many other ways of learning about this awful places, along with the other death camps, without 'tours'. I'm not saying this, and other war atrocities should be ignored, just not exploited.
The wreck of sea-vessels sunk in the war are the graves of the crew, and are dealt with reverence - i.e left alone.
Death camps should be treated the same.

I‘m baffled that the children were allowed in. We live not far from an ex-concentration camp in Germany and it’s stated very clearly that under-14s are not permitted inside - both because the content would not be suitable for them and because they might disturb people who are already upset.

Having been there, I think you're entirely wrong. It's powerful, being there, actually seeing the buildings and the belongings etc. it speaks to you in a visceral way that no book or film or talk is ever going to do.
Everyone should see it and feel it.

And it's not exploitative at all, that's disrespectful to those who run it and maintain it.

When we lived in Germany, the school trip to a Concentration Camp (Belsen) was at about 10yo.

Those children would have had no idea... but probably old enough to pick up the vibe of it being not quite right.

The tour company shouldn't have allowed it tbh.

I don’t think it’s a place for children of that age, no. They will get little from it and will likely disturb people who are there. It’s an intensely eerie, moving, traumatic (and a range of other words) place to experience that people should absolutely visit but at an age appropriate to the awfulness of the subject matter.

Inappropriate for several reasons.

I also think it's a bit lame and disrespectful to walk out. It's not as if the people who were there had that choice and they were actually living it, not just looking at pictures and exhibits. If you're that delicate then don't go.

I experienced the tour a few years ago and don't recall any young children being there with their families. What I do remember is a male friend (in his 60's) commenting when I told him where I had been. His attitude was awful and he made it clear he wouldn't want to see piles of hair and shoes in glass cases. I kept my distance from him after that.

It's not the place to take small children imo and perhaps the couple should have waited until they could get child care.

"When we lived in Germany, the school trip to a Concentration Camp (Belsen) was at about 10yo."

Good grief, that's appalling. The camp near here that doesn't allow kids under 14 is Sachsenhausen. That makes sense since 14 is the age when children become Jugendliche. I could imagine the 10-year-olds might have been in their first year at secondary school in other parts of Germany (and hence subject to something of a 'you're big people now' mentality), whereas in Berlin they're still in year 5 of junior school. You can broach the subject of camps and the Nazi era at 10, but there's no way a kid of that age could process the horrors of the place itself.

It's recommended that under 14s don't visit, it's traumatic and young children won't understand the horrors that went on there. I wouldn't take children but like ppl said the children there had no choice. Walking out is disrespectful but perhaps understandable if you had a family member there.

I agree ,my daughter went and found it very moving another relative went and he found it a powerful reminder of what happened. It's not really something I'd bring young children to but it's important that history is not forgotten.

I would never take a 3 and a 6 year old there.

I'm from an Eastern European background and at that age, my grandparents and members of my community were talking to me about what had happened to them in the second world war, in a really unfiltered and scary way. I didn't have any relatives who were in Auschwitz, but I did know people who had survived other concentration camps, and who had been deported to Siberia or Kazakhstan and separated from their parents forever and lost brothers and sisters etc. I didn't like hearing about it.

Yes, obviously it's much worse to actually be a victim of war yourself, but we try to protect our children from really awful things when they are young, don't we? I do anyway.

I do agree that actually going there as an adult makes you feel and understand it in a very immediate way, and that's important because the Holocaust is a very important part of European history. But, for a child under the age of maybe 14 or so, it will either be really traumatic, or it will go over their heads and so they'll end up seeming disrespectful.

Terrible parenting. What were they thinking? My then 16 year old went on a school program and came back traumatised.

I took my 16 and 12 year old this year, I debated about the 12 yr old. I ended up booking a private tour so we wouldn’t disrupt any one else ( I worried my 12 year old would ask lots of unfiltered questions, he didn’t). I suspect a lot went over the children’s heads at that age but they shouldn’t have disrupted the tour for others.

Actually think it gets worse as you get older I went to Anne frank museum in Amsterdam in my twenties and was sad but fine in my late 40s with teens similar age to Anne and Peter I walked out in tears. Literally couldn’t bear it.

They shouldn't have been there. It says on the website not recommended for under 14s.
Dachau is similar, not suitable for under 13s.

This thread has reminded me of something I haven't thought about in years: I went to Auschwitz in the early 90s, and the absolute worst thing was a group of Polish teenagers on a school trip who were laughing and joking as they had photos taken of themselves posed in front of the wall where people had been shot. This was the pre-selfie era so they were using actual cameras to do so. Where the heck was their teacher in all this? They had clearly not been properly prepared for visiting a camp, and were not emotionally mature enough to do so.

I wouldn't take children. But then I wouldn't go at all. A wholly inappropriate place to be turned into an attraction for tourists, surely people can understand the horror without actually going into the gas chambers.

Not as bad but there were a family of dimwits when we went to the London Dungeon. They had a kid in a buggy crying and wailing as it was too frightening.

I can understand that point of view but I think it us important to remember that the remains of the death camp are there because people who were held there at the end went back and wanted them kept so the world didn’t forget. The Germans tried to destroy the evidence, the prisoners didn’t allow that to happen. Having visited I don’t believe you can really understand what it was like from books, or the scale of it without having gone.

I imagine the parents just wanted to go themselves. In some ways I think it doesn't matter with children that young because they won't understand.

I'm a bit torn about how you should communicate these things. I think for a lot of Jews, passing on the fear was almost a deliberate strategy to try to warn future generations. You see that in European and I'm sure other cultures: tales like little red riding hood are teaching children through small amounts of fear.

Like@89redballoons I had family members who were victims of the holocaust who did a very good job of passing on inherited trauma. I think the scale and horror of it are so extreme that it's very difficult to teach to children without traumatising them, particularly if you are traumatised yourself.

The parents must have wanted to visit. They should have done this one parent at a time with the other keeping the kids for the day. I’d have said to the guide that the kids were causing disruption to the visit which is a place of respect and contemplation.