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?

My sister lived in Germany in the early 1990s and I was taken to Belsen when I was about 10 as my parents wanted to visit. I had no real concept of the atrocities so didn’t fully understand where I was. I remember it being very unsettling to walk around the graves and that I had to be taken out of the museum as I was upset. Sister took me out while my parents watched a short film in the museum and we sat quietly in the car park.

I went on to do history to degree level and whilst having been on a visit put things in context and enhanced* my empathy in later years I wouldn’t take young children. They are unlikely to fully take it in and it’s unsettling. I think they are good places to go to experience a fraction of the horror and educate people but I would wait until mid-secondary school at least.

*Enhance isn’t the right word but my menopausal brain can’t think of a better way to express it right now.

I grew up in Germany. We had to watch Schindler's list, it was a school trip. I'd agree that generally my approach is to be guided by the views of the victims, I guess I just didn't quite get the concept of a tour to a place of such horrors, and my Jewish friends seem to have very mixed views about it.

Just because they're allowed entry doesn't mean that everyone has to think it's right. It's no place for children imo.

I'm in two minds about this. The children in question do seem to be too young for the particular horrors of the death camps.
But although it was not concentration camps, when DH was a teacher he often went on school trips to WW1 graves and memorial sites like Thiepvaal. These were teenagers, probably studying WW1 history.
He said it was enormously valuable for the children who were often visibly moved, both at the numbers and extent of the graves and cemeteries (many thousands, it's a truly sobering sight) and especially when they saw the ages on the young soldiers' graves -- many only a couple of years older than the kids.

Lame? Even the floor of the Imperial War Museum dedicated to the Holocaust has exits dotted around so people can leave. I found that pretty hard going myself. No, the victims didn't have a choice, but I can imagine visiting a death camp can be upsetting, especially for the people who had family who died there. We don't know anything about the people who were there when OP visited.

To be quite blunt, it is part of her culture and has been done for 4 generations.

Your view as I assume an outsider isn't relevant nor particularly insightful. It sounds quite ignorant.

If your family are descended from those impacted then I am sure you would have a different opinion.

Plenty of cultural milestones take place before we are capable of cognitive understanding that doesn't mean that they aren't key to those older who may not be there when the youngest is able to appreciate it on a different level.

It gives my friend comfort that she brought her grandchildren there. I bring my children to my sister's grave before they could walk I equate it to that, no it isn't the same but to me and her it is setting our family's personal pilgrimages in our history.

I very much doubt the sound of a child is more upsetting than the historical horrors that are marked there.

I think 6 and 3 is far too young to go somewhere like that. I do think it’s important for children to learn about the holocaust and for everyone to see the evidence / realities of it by visiting, but children need to be emotionally mature enough to handle it. I haven’t been but imagine I would be carrying around the images and stories for weeks afterwards

No, you don't have to think it's right, but you do have to respect their right to be there.

I am so sorry for what your parents went through. And that you had to grow listening to what happened to them it must have been horrific for you.

I remember exactly where i was sitting watching the World At War footage- I had to get up from my seat and go to parents on sofa who carried on watching- But who explained it was real.
Doubt if those reels would be allowed to be shown now on ordinary TV.

There is a superb interview by Tova Friedman ( child survivor- @TheignT who was one of the few liberated children- On you tube.

It’s so interesting and shows the sheer luck it took t survive.

Never cry.
Never fuss.
Blend in.

Same here, and as I said earlier in the thread, I've seen these places in my nightmares too because of how the war was explained to me to during my childhood. I'd never do that to one of my children.

I think if children don't have family members connected to it, though, it might go over their heads. But that probably depends on the child.

That's not quite accurate as I visited Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp this year with my 11 year old. The guidance is for children aged 14+ but you can go in with younger children, and we saw plenty there on our visit. We were going to go to Auschwitz in Poland before we realised the minimum age recommendations (and even at Auschwitz it's a recommendation, not an absolute) and reviews from parebts agreeing with that age limit. There were plenty of reviews about the Sachsenhausen Camp from parents who'd taken younger children there who advised the exhibits were not as extensive or quite as harrowing (for want of a better description but I don't know how to put it) as the likes of Auschwitz and presumably Belsen. My child was fine & found the trip very interesting and educational and we do have conversations occasionally about politics, refugees and how awful things happen I'm the world, often prompted by the news or subjects mentioned at school, so I felt (rightly as it transpired) my child would be able to absorb the information and the significance of what happened there and how it was allowed to happen, without being traumatised themselves.

I went to Auschwitz with my family as a teen. One guy filmed every single exhibit on his camcorder, which I found odd. There was a family with young kids there, who were laughing and charging about in the exhibit houses and later, after the tour, while I was retching outside from having seen the mat woven out of human hair, I saw they had put down a blanket and were having a jolly picnic not far from the "Arbeit Macht Frei" gates.
What some people think is appropriate in such a place honestly beggars belief.

Teenagers can’t handle their emotions sometimes, one of my young cousins started laughing during a funeral to the disgust of the elders but he was really just not coping with the tension and grief around him not being horrible.
The more I read the less I think anyone under 18 should go … even war graves like the ones in Normandy can be emotional and disturbing, and obvs this is in a completely different scale.

I went to Auschwitz with my family as a teen. One guy filmed every single exhibit on his camcorder, which I found odd.

Maybe they were filming it for a relative that was unable to go. Footage taken from a family member is somehow more personal than whatever you can find online.

In terms of what age is appropriate to visit such a place, it depends on the maturity of the child and their ability to be quiet and respectful for the benefit of other people. The subject matter is disturbing but if you grow up in place steeped in violent history then you are exposed to this pretty young. I'm in Scotland and I think by age 12 most kids have had trips to battle fields and are familiar with sites of torture, death, hangings etc. I think a visit to Auchwitz could be a moving and educational experience for some kids.

I took my kids to Sachsenhausen when they were about 13&15. It made a deep impression on them and I’m glad we went. They are pretty mature and interested in history and it was the right thing to do. Older son went back there on an A level history trip - loves Berlin. Any younger would not be appropriate for reasons cited above.

I've been and would disagree with you. It is the sheer scale of the camp that can't be envisaged.

@CyranoDeBergerQuack there is nothing in a book which can compare with standing there in the Room of Hair and looking at it. Nothing. There are no photos of inmates in the camps - it's not like that. Like someone else said there is a sense of peace there and of emptiness as well.

Someone else mentioned Schindlers Factory and it was this place that had a greater effect on me. There is a room of various Jewish possessions which had been brought over the river from krakow when the Jews were moved over to the ghetto. The cruelty to me was in the way that the Nazis had given these people hope and then just destroyed it on the other side of that bridge. The sight of a Nazi SS uniform gave me shivers down my back - it just felt evil.

You are not allowed to take photos of the Room of Hair but here's one of the shoes.

oddly it felt entirely benign

I imagine yes given the gas chambers were destroyed in the war.

Absolutely agree. I've been and it's harrowing, far more so than any book or film ever showed me.

Dachau was done in a very appropriate and sensitive way, it was a memorial.
DH wasn't keen on going but he said he was glad he did, the DC are half German so its important for them to understand how it all happened and its not just a case of "Germans are bad". We took them to Zepplin platz for the same reason, again thats done very appropriately

We've always visited sites of historical interest so I think this was just another one as far as he was concerned. No more/less traumatic than talking about castles, battlefields etc. We kept our explanations simple and not too graphic. We set in a historical context and didn't set out to shock.

Our kids were calm and reasonably interested as we walked around and asked questions. It's never really been mentioned again as far as I recall.

There were adults there taking "artistic" photos of barbed wire. I think they had missed the point more than my kids.