Smile! You’re at Auschwitz! (pic from blog http://atinainvienna.wordpress.com)
I was in London last week, marvelling at the efficiency of its underground rail service, the aesthetic coherence of its built landscape, and the unrelenting rush of its denizens. Quite a place.
As I wandered through some of the most popular tourist attractions — the Tower of London and St Paul’s Cathedral among them — I got to thinking. At the Tower of London, I, like most of the visitors, queued to get in to the former prison. I couldn’t wait to be set loose on the relics of its grim history: the armoury, stocked with the best contemporary weapons for hacking chunks from your enemies; the courtyard where royal heads had rolled; the windowless room in the basement of one of the towers, where prisoners had been broken on the rack and into which other unfortunates had been bundled and left to wither, die and rot. “Bring it on!” I thought.
As I slowly shuffled forwards in the queue of eager tourists, I wondered how the experience could be improved even more for us. Wouldn’t it be more realistic to have cadavers delivered to the Tower, then dress them in rags and scatter throughout the prison? Some could even be mutilated and decapitated for added verisimilitude. After all, it is a place of misery and death that we are visiting, no? Shouldn’t the sense of horror and outrage at the punitive measures that were deployed in the Tower of London be the focus? Shouldn’t we leave a place like this shaking and traumatised, instead of feeling satisfied that we’ve chalked off a major tourist attraction on the standard ’10 Things To Do In London’?
Parents mingled with the Tower of London crowds on the day that I visited. They chaperoned their children through the sites, watched with pride when they were well-behaved in the torture section, and explained with relish how the rack worked. Good, wholesome, family fun all round, it seems.
Things were similar in St Paul’s Cathedral. I always thought that places of worship like this were supposed to be quiet, but instead, a hum of tourist babble echoed through the huge building. We tourists filed dutifully downwards, towards the crypts, where we blithely strolled over graves, slowly wearing away the deceased’s details etched there on stones, as we sought out the resting places of ‘famous’ people. When the families of these people interred them in St Paul’s, did they have any premonition that the graves would in time become no more than flagstones to carry curious tourists from one side of the crypt to the other?
Is it a rule of thumb that respect for the dead ends after an appointed time; say, a century or more? Once the appointed time elapses, it presumably becomes an open house for marauding tourists. Give it a few more centuries, and your humble remains might even be the focus of an archaeological dig. Your bones might be unearthed, scrubbed and assembled for display in a badly-lit museum. Things of significance that might have been buried alongside you could end up elsewhere, cleansed of their once-precious relevance.
Some people argue that places like Auschwitz should be obliterated once the last survivors of the place die. They say that the structure should be razed to the ground, for fear that, over time, it would become stripped of the immense injustice that it symbolises, showered in toxic tourist credentials, and enjoyed by visiting families looking for no more than a pleasant day out. Sometimes, I am inclined to agree. Auschwitz will not be forgotten if its physical remnants are removed. Destroying it would also save it from the fate of becoming divorced from its context and bedevilled by banality, a mere tourist site to be exploited. In a much smaller scale, places like the prison cells of the Tower of London — where the misery of its inhabitants is literally etched on the walls — show what happens when they become significant primarily as tourist destinations.
Or maybe I just need to lighten up, don an ‘I love Science’ t-shirt and plan a summer visit to Chernobyl…
[...] democratic. We’ll purchase ‘must-haves’ that you don’t need, turn cemeteries into tourist hotspots, and mistake celebrity for [...]
I understand your point of view even though I don’t agree with you. I’ve been to Auschwitz and I can assure you that no one thinks this visit is a nice day trip! And there is no money making whatsoever (as some of the comments let us believe). I didn’t pay for the entrance and I didn’t pay for the bus to bring me from Auschwitz I to Birkenau. It is to remind us of how people were treated and are still treated! I think it’s necessary that the memorie of those who have lost their lives here remain alive and the best way to do that is to let these places intact. It’s so different reading about these places or walking there…
Anyway good post, because it’s open for discussiion!
Thanks dutch. It’s something of a relief to hear that the money-making is kept to a minimum. I just feel that, given enough time, Auschwitz and the like will go the way of so many other relics of our history. Solemnity will make way for apathy and the place will struggle to preserve the kind of gravitas that befits a burial place of such tragic proportions.
I absolutely understand your worries. I do hope it will not, but I truly think that places like Auschwitz will never get to that point. It’s too heavy..to horrible when you visit it. Or maybe I’m just wishful thinking….
i only mind when people disrespect those places.
what you said is something to think about, good point. I agree, but I couldn’t deny they are interesting places to visit either just because i like taking lessons from historical places i visit.
I think there’s a huge difference between a regular historical landmark and one that stands as a reminder of one of the greatest tragedies to humanity. Sure, maybe the Titanic will lose its moral teachings in time, and the Tower of London might have become a macabre spectacle, but I don’t think that a site as chilling as Auschwitz will ever become a summertime tourist attraction. I agree that this has happened to other grave sites, like Gettysburg and Valley Forge, where it’s hard to “see” what really happened there, but people have told me that one only truly understands just how many people suffered and died during the Holocaust when you visit a concentration camp in person.
Also, if people start having picnics outside of Dachau in 100 years, mankind has far, far bigger issues to attend to…
I visited Dachau near Munich in April and it’s not an experience I’m likely to forget anytime soon, if ever. My friends and I did the guided walking tour which lasted nearly 3 hours. I think it helped having a guide who was able to truly explain to us the experiences of the prisoners who passed through the concentration camp. She had testimonials from former prisoners and we even walked through the gas chamber (which historians are not sure was ever used at that particular camp). I may have been very affected because concentration camps are recent history or maybe I have a personal connection to World War II. It’s not something I’ve ever really thought about before
I think it all depends on how an exhibit is set up, but then I’m a sensitive person. I remember being overwhelmed visiting the battlefields in Gettysburg, PA. When you think about it, death and violence are so widespread and have occurred on almost every square inch of this planet. It would get too exhausting to have to think about all the time and constantly tell yourself, “Somebody died here a violent death because of xyz.” After a few hundred years, the wounds eventually heal, scar over, and fade away. They have to. Otherwise it would get way too depressing!
I don’t believe that the majority of people visiting Auschwitz do so in a disrespectful manner. I do definitely believe it is important to have places like this where we keep history fresh in our minds. I’m a historian myself, and it’s incredible what an impact “place” has on the psychology of people. The easiest way to destroy public memory is to destroy the places where that memory is kept…It’s been a major strategy in wars and conflicts around the world. You want to obliterate a culture? destroy their monuments, museums, libraries, churches…tell them that history didn’t happen the way they think it did. Convince them they aren’t who they think they are. It’s amazing how easy it is to rewrite history even on a large scale, and we should all be very aware of that.
That said, in the case of Auschwitz in particular, I’m not sure it should be saved. As much as I’m grateful for the opportunity to have visited Auschwitz, what we see there now is only a hollow shell of what it was (and same for the Tower of London, I imagine). You’re right though, it does NOT deserve to become a mere tourist attraction. And yknow, these concentration camps weren’t built to stand the test of time, and even now, most of the structures there aren’t even originals…we’re basically just rebuilding ruins over and over and over, at huge financial cost (and not enough people pitching in to cover that cost). I honestly think that the respectful thing to do is to step back and let that hell melt into dust, where it belongs. As much as we might like to, we cannot and should not hold on to everything forever. There are plenty of other ways to remember.
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Thanks; I’ll have a look…
Maybe in this day and age, history taken off context and sold to families of tourists is the closest we can get, having that much time elapsed from history, to try and imagine how different times were. I think it is very important that relics to major events in history not be forgotten. If there is a physical place that this can keep itself and its story mounted, over time, it is very hard to write it out. With no physical proof or artifact of the event, those that “won” will write it right on out or over and it will be forgotten. They say the side that has the power writes the history. Propaganda after all is an art in this modern era. The spinners would like there to be no examples of truth if they had it their way. So, it may have been cheesy and a little bit awkward to be watching families take their kids to a dungeon, those kids are a new generation that saw that that took place with their own eyes. It evoked enough interest to try and imagine what those times were like to see it for yourself, thus making your mind ponder, to your writing this post and creating all of this conversation within all of the se other people (myself included), so that one physical structure that is proof of life has reached out to new groups and new generations and that is pretty powerful in any context.
Reblogged this on CynTruDian.
Great post that really gets one reflecting on past travel experiences, as well as ones to come. As others have noted, I do feel conflicted at times visiting certain sights as a tourist — I do not want to demean or belittle the significant experiences that others may have endured there, but yet seeing such a sight in person often brings such depth to the history of a location. It is very bothersome to me, though, when visitors do not respect those worshipping in active places of worship that are simultaneously open for tourist viewing. I become very uncomfortable in those situations — even walking through the open side aisles of Notre Dame in Paris while the sanctuary was full of parishioners — but more so when someone who is obviously seeking solace is worshipping in a quiet nook of an old chapel, and a tour or tourists loudly chatter. It also detracts from the experience of visiting and soaking up the ambience of the sight. In any event, nicely done, and a well-deserved FP recognition. ~ Kat
Thanks Kat. I was in Wraclaw in Poland last year, at the wedding of two friends of mine. The church where the ceremony took place remained open to tourists throughout the event, who were more than eager to stroll in and loudly proclaim how much they liked the place. The wedding party, meanwhile, huddled together and tried to make-believe the sense of reverence that they should otherwise have enjoyed…!
As an ex-Londoner (for 60 years) I really liked your thoughts on the grisly aspects of tourism, and about the way that the huge churches are not really respected as places of contemplation. The London Dungeon is the number one attraction, so maybe people just like to be reminded of that aspect of life? I once visited Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, and Colditz Castle (not allowed in), during a tour of the former DDR. This was all laid on by the authorities, so they obviously thought that was what we wanted to see! Great Blog, will be back.
Pete, England.
You make an excellent point that the solemnity of certain historic sites should be preserved and not trivialized.
But I feel that sites like these have an immense educational value to those people who are willing to learn. I have visited Dachau — twice — and by seeing it in person (going through the historic displays, walking through a reconstructed barrack, standing inside a gas chamber), I felt that I started to gain a better understanding of what it was like to be there during WWII. I’ve read numerous Holocaust books with their horrific descriptions but seeing a place like Dachau gets the lesson across more vividly. As a memorial at Dachau says, “Nie Wieder”. (Never Again)
Thanks tanzer. The overwhelming response to my post has been that sites like Auschwitz should be kept as tangible reminders of when humanity gets things woefully wrong. I just wish there was some way to present them to visitors — and for visitors to present themselves to these places — with the solemnity that they deserve. How do you hold back the tourist tide, which covers everything in a veneer of superficiality, reducing these profound places to mere photo opportunities…
I think these places should be preserved however you do make many good points. Unfortunately it’s human nature to devalue things over time. It’s probably a survival mechanism. But from a historical perspective I would rather they exist even if devalued.
Really enjoyed the post, very interesting ideas on how to ‘control’ tourists to show the right amount of respect. I have to agree with others that Auschwitz needs to remain a ‘live’ site to be visited – recreating the traumatic affects of the events there is impossible to condense into words. Having seen the effect of the place on a bus load of 18 – 35yo’s with no interest in history there’s no way words can replace witnessing. The mandatory visits that all German school children make also require a site to witness. Having said that, nothing grates me more than seeing tourists be quite blase about the whole thing, taking cheesy photo’s etc, but perhaps this is their way to deal with it? Not everyone can take in the enormity of some atrocities – places like the Killing Fields and Srebrenica don’t hit home until you stand there and see it for yourself. The distance of time is, as you said, what dilutes the immediacy of experience. I guess what’s needed is proper education of respect for history, while still making it engaging enough for tourists to keep coming!! Tricky stuff indeed. Thanks for posting!!
Hi carlyhulls and thanks for your comment. I suppose that, with tragedies of the enormity of Auschwitz, compelling reasons will remain for keeping the place intact as a grim reminder. It still runs the risk of being relegated to a place of merely morbid curiosity, like the residences of serial killers and suchlike. Often, sites like these are destroyed because visitors don’t tend to come to pay their respects. Who knows what eventual fate lies in store for Auschwitz…
Great post! I had many of these same thoughts as I toured the crypts in Paris. I wonder, should we start including a “No Tourism” clause in our wills? Or is it thrilling to know that one day people will tour our own tombstones and death sites?
I think that the idea of someone visiting our graves in the years after our deaths is probably comforting for a lot of people, but the idea of tourists visiting the site of, say, your murderous demise, well, that’s not quite as satisfying, I would think. With the St Paul’s Cathedral episode that I mentioned, I saw (and admittedly, did so myself) tourists rush over gravestones on the floor, without a thought for those deposited below, as they made their way to a famous poet’s plinth on the far wall. I suppose that, eventually, such a fate awaits us all…if there’s a lesson here, it’s that you should insist on being buried behind a wall at head’s height. That way you’re safe…
Congratulations on being “Freshly Pressed” – well deserved, I might add. You raise difficult questions, particularly regarding Holocaust sites. While the individual horrors perpetrated in the Tower of London were no less relevant for the individuals who endured them, or the families who sacrificed loved ones to its tender embrace, the monument – surrounded as it is by the bustle of a powerful and progressive nation – serves more as a historical point of interest, as if to say, “look where we were, and look at what we have become”; the body count was relatively low, and the horror has been swallowed up by fascination regarding centuries long past. This contrasts starkly with the Nazi death camps, still vivid in the memories of living people and their first-line descendants, relics of a madness which did not evolve into something better but rather collapsed in ruin and whose human toll still staggers the imagination. Part of me would like nothing better than to see these abominations wiped off the map and replaced with memorials of peace and beauty, but there is something about the phrase “never again” that exerts a backward pressure on that idea, that demands the preservation of the truth, so that 500 years from now people might still be chastened by a memory of what man is capable of if evil is allowed to prevail. Thanks again for a stimulating read.
Many thanks, Old Wolf, for the congrats and the considered reply. I agree that — if gradations of horror are appropriate here — the Tower of London shrinks before the towering, all-too-recent injustices of Auschwitz. I hope that what’s left of that place continues to provoke thoughtful and solemn reactions, instead of whimsical ‘been there, done that’ tourism.
I found this psot very interesting.You are right,why should tourists enjoy such a place,where the lives of many people were ended there. I have read about the history of The Tower of London. But,I never grasped the concept of the,’Rack’.How does it exactly work? And the ‘Brazen Bull’.
Hello Pikachu. The Rack and the Brazen Bull, eh? Perfect Friday reading. The rack was a wooden table-like device that a victim was roped to. The ropes were then tightened via a pulley system and the victim was basically stretched. Bone dislocations, massive ligament and muscle damage, and tearing flesh ensued.
As I understand it, the Brazen Bull was a hollow bronze bull that a victim was placed inside of. The bull was then positioned over a fire or heat source and the victim was roasted to death inside. His/her screams could be heard via tubes that exited the bull; these tubes were fashioned so that the screams sounded like the bellows of a bull. I’m not sure if the device was ever actually used though — it may be a mythical construction.
Oh.So the Rack,could the injuries be healed. lets say,in this century,would it be healed or not?
Thanks.
You might survive the rack. You’d be somewhat taller and sore for a while though…!
Oh. Thanks. So,being taller can become back to normal?
That’s cool but terrible.
Reblogged this on Oyia Brown.
Many thanks.
When you enter a German former death camp now memorial place, the sheer size of vast emptiness around you muffles your thoughts.
There’s stubs of baracks sticking out the ground. The rows go on to the horizon. A human mind can simply not capture this.
I’ve seen teenagers fall silent.
The emptiness that fills space and air, creeps in to your mind and heart, stays with you for more than the day of your visit.
You’ll never forget.
‘Auschwitz will not be forgotten if its physical remnants are removed’
It’s practically forgotton right now, never mind if it’s demolished.
How many people remember the genocide carried out by the Turks on the Armenian people? Very few because, unlike the Jewish Holocaust , the publicity never leaked out, the perpetrators denied it and there were no death camps (people were tied together by ropes and pushed into fast flowing rivers, generally).
Tourists are by nature ‘foolish’ and do foolish things (like giggle at instruments of torture) but there needs to be some memorial to the fallen, the tortured and the murdered peoples of the Earth.
I never think of Auschwitz as a memorial to the Jews without including the Gypsies, the homosexuals, the mentally ill and the enemies of the State.
Auschwitz has a great relevance to the present – you start out being ‘proud of your country’, being ‘patriotic’, and then you start to have places like Guantanamo to ‘protect’ your country…..then it all unravels.
I’m British but I never forget that it was the British who invented Concentration Camps, all in the name of patriotism by a proud people who’s leaders just wanted to ravish the Earth.
Thank you for your really thoughtful and provocative blog, excellent.
I totally understand where you’re coming from. I’ve been to Auschwitz and it shocked me how Museum-like this camp was. I also felt irritated with the idea that there’s a small money making “industry” around it.
I was also in Majdanek, a death camp that is a completely different experience. Much less “tourist-y” and far more striking for anyone interested in history.
What I’m trying to say is that it really depends on the way such places are preserved and presented.
I would no doubt run away in horror if some actors would “re-enact” the burning of bodies… But I did follow a holocaust survivor quietly and listened to his first hand testimony “on location”. Trust me, the visual effects, the smell in the air, the sounds… it’s a lesson I will never forget.
Good post!
Thanks gilshalev — that’s a good alternative reading of the importance of keeping these places intact. Your experience of Majdanek suggests a place that has managed to preserve the tragic majesty of such sites, without pandering to the whims of the tourist trade…
[...] Torture and Death for all the Family. [...]
Reminds me of when I was a child and we visited a few historic sites on torture in the medieval ages in Germany… Instead of feeling smarter and wiser, I always felt depressed when leaving the place, especially after my parents explained to me what this and that instrument was for… Ugh! Thanks for sharing!
Perhaps it’s better not to be knowledgeable on some things — particularly where implements of torture are concerned…!
Wow, that is really creepy, but fascinating. I really hope they dont raze any buildings down, because I would like to visit that place someday and learn the historic facts about it. Great blog! But overall, I really liked your writing style, it was suspenseful, unique and fast-paced. Hope you keep going~
http://sookyuml.wordpress.com/
Thanks sookyuml — I’ll try!
I love your blog! Interesting post.
Much obliged!
Reblogged this on Parted Only By Ocean.
Thanks Natalie!
Very thought provoking post. I had not heard of the school of thought on destroying Auschwitz. I can somewhat understand the argument for destruction in that one doesn’t want the site to be trivialized. At the same time, I think physical remains are important because it is an in-your-face reminder which can produce a more visceral reaction to the tragedy. Also, memories fade and die off with the populations who hold them.
I visited some Irish famine cottages and found them to be a stark reminder of suffering some people go through. It was tastefully done and full of information you could read on the causes and impacts of the famine. Maybe the key is in how these sites are managed and with what intentions… money-making gift shop vs. educational. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for your comment Erin. I agree that the physical presence of a place like Auschwitz can help preserve and remind people of the horrors meted out to its victims. However, these places are also dependent on the meanings and contexts that we apply to them, and there’s no guarantee that the future of Auschwitz as a destination for travellers will be one couched in the sort of solemnity and gravitas that it deserves.
Glad to hear that the famine cottage visit was educational. A good deal of funding was poured into sites like these in recent years. I wonder what sort of spin will be put on them next year, for the god-awfully pitched ‘The Gathering‘…
I don’t think anybody goes to Auschwitz for a “fun day”.
Don’t forget there are still too many which deny its existence or purpose. Destroying the place would not help with that.
Whoever doesn’t want to go, doesn’t need to. Why destroy it, as long as there are people interested in it?
Hi Andreas and thanks for the comment. I actually believe that some people do go to Auschwitz for a fun or enjoyable day out — if some of the photos they’ve taken once there are considered. Smiling faces, thumbs up, happy days. Perhaps such people are a minority sect but they certainly exist and they are certainly adequately catered for in tourist destinations worldwide.
Destroying Auschwitz, so the argument goes, would in fact preserve the solemnity of the place by avoiding the trappings of tourist destinations. Removed in such a manner from the possibility of becoming a mere item of tourist interest, Auschwitz can be couched in the solemnity that it deserves, and the millions that died there can be afforded some measure of symbolic peace in the very ground wherein they rest…
I don’t see what the difference would be in visiting a place for its historical value or visiting a museum which, in all likelihood, houses items that have just as much historical and personal value. I can visit a museum and call it a great day out and I am probably inclined to do the same when visiting sites and Civil War landmarks, but its because I grew up knowing to respect the history of things and the people involved. I truly believe that if our country placed more respect and value on such places, we’d have a richer culture and possibly a better vision of what is happening based on what has already happened.
Many of us also read books on the history of tragic events, and we do it for the pleasure of it. The pleasure of reading? Learning? Of being engaged as much as we can because we’re so distanced from it? Who knows.
Personally, I think whatever gets one fired up about learning the history of culture, places, and people is fantastic!
Good comment Dena, thanks. I suppose that a crucial difference between a museum and a place like the Tower of London (or, better, Auschwitz) is that the museum-stored objects are already considerably divorced from their historical context and, as it were, ‘artificially’ presented. The artifice of artifacts, if you like.
By contrast, places of death often still ache with the tragedies they bore witness to. The problem is that this quiet echo of past sorrows is drowned out by the tumult of the tourist machine. Is learning from such places still possible? Perhaps, but something quite profound is also lost in the process; something more immediate and human , buried under eager tourists’ feet…
This was a thought-provoking and well-written post. I read an article on CNN a while back about a similar topic. (This was the only one I could find now but I don’t think it’s the exact one: http://travel.cnn.com/freakiest-places-around-world-681626). I have to admit, I like visiting places like this – out of a morbid curiosity, yes, but also to feel and empathize with a fraction of the pain that the people who lived and breathed these places felt.) I don’t feel places like this should be treated as a “fun day” with the family; they should be treated with respect.
Thanks for your comment. I have to admit to enjoying visits to places like this as well, although I try to approach them with a measure of solemnity. In the Tower of London, prisoners have etched their names, prayers and hopes into the very stonework of the cells — some such etchings are very elaborate and help to emphasise the drudgery of time that these prisoners were laboured with. I’m tempted to wonder how the presence of such tangible reminders don’t render anyone who sees them silent, such is their resonance.
I suppose there is also a practical consideration for parents who bring their kids to these places. If they didn’t, where would they find safekeeping for them in an unfamiliar city?!
So true. I am going to London in March and will be visiting those same places, I have often thought these very things. Great post, and congrats on being Freshly Pressed!
Many thanks spangler.seven. Don’t let my post put you off a visit though. The Tower of London is highly enjoyable — get there early in the morning and be sure to opt for a guided tour with one of the Yeomen, which is included in your ticket price. St Paul’s Cathedral is also worth a visit — just avoid stepping on the graves in the crypt!
I felt a similar reaction when visiting the Winchester Debtors Prison. I wondered what made it acceptable that this place where hundreds suffered and starved to death was now a stop between coffee and lunch. The shackles held real, actual humans who were chained to stone walls to die for debt, and here I was jingling change to drop in the preservation fund box before I went to spend more money. It felt disrespectful, but I still climbed the stairs and questioned the curator.
Unfortunately, this kind of disjunct between the gravitas of a place and its tourist veneer is all too common. I’ve been told (though haven’t seen it myself) that there are famine visitor centres in certain places in Ireland (remembering the Great Famine of the 1840s that decimated our population) that house conveniently located restaurants on-site, selling lunchtime specials for famished visitors…
When the hallowed grounds become playgrounds….
Dark, and deeply thought provoking. Thank you for a wonderful post!
Thanks for your comment, 1beccainamillion!
I loved your post especially, “chaperoned their children through the sites, watched with pride when they were well-behaved in the torture section, and explained with relish how the rack worked.”
Thanks Tina. Watching the spectacle actually unfold before me, the piece virtually wrote itself. You couldn’t make it up!
Should you ever find yourself in that vast stretch of North American prairie commonly known as “The Fly-over Zone”, you might wish to visit the portion locally known as “St. Joseph, Missouri.” St Joe has a lot of museums, among them the Glore Psychiatric Museum that has several floors of displays. Unlike the displays of torture dungeons, this facility was designed by early shrinks to HELP people. You will no doubt be amazed at the similarity of the implements thus used on “patients” to the torture implements you see in the dungeons. And when you’ve finished touring, you can stop at the gift shop and buy yourself a rubber brain!
I rest my case…!
I visted Auschwitz on a sixth-form trip to Germany and Poland when I was about 17 – I am very glad that I went, but I am also very glad that I never have to go back. I think places like that should be maintained and used to help people learn about and try and understand what happened – as a History undergraduate, I am all for anything that teaches more people about the past. However, I completely agree with your ambivalence on places like these being treated like any other tourist attraction – at Auschwitz, I was a bit disturbed by visitors taking photographs, not just of their surroundings but of themselves underneath the Arbeit Macht Frei sign, for instance. “Why are they taking pictures?” I found myself thinking. “Are they going to forget what they’ve seen here? I’m never going to forget this as long as I live.” Interestingly, I have also been to the Tower of London and this feeling never occurred to me. I wonder why that is? This is a great post, and congratulations on being Freshly Pressed.
Thanks a million littlenavyfish. Again, I can’t help but relate to your puzzlement over the meaning of the kinds of photos taken at Auschwitz. When I was searching for a pic to go with the piece, there were more blatantly problematic tourist shots that I could have used from visitors to the place — photos of smiling people, delighted that they’ve made their way to the death camp…
Places with so much history should be preserved even if their purpose at one point was for destruction, misery, and torture. The world needs to have these physical reminders of what has happened lest they happen again. If Auschwitz were destroyed, then how would people be reminded of that cruel point in history? It would be like sweeping all the pain and suffering under the rug and denying that the Holocaust (or Shoah) never happened. Though, it is a shame that the meanings of these historical places is sometimes lost over the years. As in the example with the graves inside St Paul’s Cathedral.
Good point, gwendolynrose. I think that, with the wealth of film footage, first-hand accounts, survivor testimony and the like, Auschwitz would not be forgotten even if its physical presence were removed. Granted, it might be easier to attempt such a cover up without the reality of Auschwitz to turn to. However, the tourist trade has a tendency to level all things and present them on a superficial plane, as places to visit and be done with…
I am not sure how to preserve these moments of silence. I think that as a person you either ‘get it’ or you don’t. Sadly I don’t think that this reverence can be forced.
Reblogged this on A Global Nomad and commented:
Such an interesting piece, and while I am inclined to agree that places like Auschwitz should not be “a mere tourist site to be exploited,” I don’t believe it is right to obliterate the place. While the holocaust is something history will never forget, obliterating the place makes the atrocities committed and the deaths that took place a little more distant, we become a lot less detached.
I have never been to Auschwitz myself, but I have been in the USHM in Washington, D.C. And while I am a history junkie, I never want to return to the USHM. I have read a fair amount of publications that give a run down of the brutalities that went on in Nazi Germany, but it is never as disturbing and blood-curdling as being inside the USHM. I can’t begin to imagine how distressing it must be to actually go to Auschwitz.
Thanks joeynavarrete. I agree that having a tangible means of connecting with atrocities like Auschwitz can help to situate it and contextualise it much more easily, but I fear that, like most things in our past, once the relative immediacy of the happenings of Auschwitz fade somewhat, so will the tendency to treat the place itself with the solemnity that it deserves. I appreciate your reblogging also!
You raise some very interesting and valid questions and although I understand and appreciate where you are coming from I disagree that Auschwitz and other concentration camps, for that matter, should be obliterated.
My grandfather’s family perished in the holocaust and I grew up in Israel where, for obvious reasons, many of my friends’ and classmates’ families and relatives shared a similar fate. We commemorate the holocaust by devoting one day a year to grieving as a nation but we extensively study the subject in school, lest we forget. As part of the effort to keep this memory alive in younger generations some schools organize trips for high school students to those sites. The purpose is not sensationalist gawking but rather to remind us of many things – starting from our own private family history to, on a bigger scale, the history of our people and (sorry for the cliche) where human evil can lead us, I regret never joining one of those delegations myself as a teenager. I’d like to know that my children will have the opportunity to do so and connect to a past which will be that much more distant and intangible otherwise.
Thanks Katia — you’ve put forward a valid position there. Not every visitor to Auschwitz and the like will treat it in so blithe a fashion. The question is how to preserve such moments of silence amid the roar of the tourist trade…
This was a really interesting and well written post. I’m inclined to agree with you that tourism tens to desecrate “sacred” sites. Even Auschwitz as you mention, is bedeviled by tourists, and all they bring. I think part of looking at all the old torture devices, and other scary things from yesteryear is an attempt to pat ourselves on the back, and say, “see, things are much better now than they were then.” I think we have a tendency to see the past as either uniformly glorious, or unrelentingly harsh, without much in between.
Thanks james. Absolutely true — our perspectives on history often tend to neglect the vast proportion of it that takes place in that grey area between contrived juxtaposition…!
Interesting post. I had a similar feeling while visiting Alcatraz some years ago.
We must never destroy Auschwitz! As a history lover, nothing excited me more than the thought of going there. But it was much more than that. I wanted to see what destroyed Anne Frank’s spirit. I wanted to see the remains of the ‘showers’. I wanted to walk in the footsteps of all those others who deserved long, full lives just as much as I do. (Or do I?)
Until I actually saw it I had never grasped the size of the former camp. Seeing the train line that led into the prison made the bile rise in my throat.
Once inside the grounds I saw the enormity of the place and my comprehension of what those poor souls endured became clearer.
To walk through it, head bowed respectfully, is actually an homage to their suffering. In a weird way, it’s polite. We’re telling their souls we can never forget them.
I’m sure if the victims who suffered in the Tower of London could have managed it, that there would be records of their experiences too. But it was a different time. Kings and Queens had absolute power and could destroy anyone on a whim.
This was a time before free media and the internet.
Perhaps we should only feel lucky that we won’t endure anything like this. We can instead promise those tortured souls that we’ll live good lives to show our respect for them.
Thank you for posting this blog. It revived a lot of memories from when I was there a decade ago. It’s a haunting, amazing place.
Thanks suze01. In a sense, I believe that Auschwitz will never be destroyed — the collective memory of it and its place in world history in any case. The actual edifice, its physical presence, may haunt and disturb, but time — and ‘must-see’ tourist guides — have a habit of rendering such places banal. The abyss of suffering and hatred opened up by the likes of Auschwitz can be filled in with the accumulated debris of generations of tourists. You are then left with a sort of pathos-by-numbers. I hope such a fate does not await Auschwitz…
Last week I went to Tuol Sleng, the infamous Khmer Rouge prison and torture facility in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Like you, I felt extremely ambivalent about visiting it as a tourist. I’m still not certain whether I should have gone, and whether it’s respectful to visit such a place. There was actually a sign posted there with a smiling face and a red “No” circle running through it, as in, “No laughing.” As if I needed to be told that. But apparently, *someone* does.
And the strangest thing: there were actually 2 Tuol Sleng survivors there selling books and doing photo ops. What to do—buy the book and get the photo? It feels weird and wrong to do it, but somehow disrespectful to decline. Utterly bizarre and disturbing experience.
Aviatrixkim, that’s precisely the sort of ambivalence that I felt myself when in the Tower of London. The Phnom Penh facility (which I’ve never visited) fills me with a profound sense of despair when I think about it. It’s difficult to see how opening such places to the tourist industry could ever become anything other than trivialised with the passage of time.
Perhaps the mere fact of these ambivalent feelings is enough to preserve some genuine sense of the profundity at play there.
I was there too and it did seem rather strange. However, I felt the Killing Fields kind of got it right. The rows upon rows of skulls were a daunting reminder and the clothes in there made it real. More than anything though, as I wandered, it was quiet. That was the difference. How do you make somewhere quiet though? A place like the Tower of London is so noisy, as there are so many people there. I’m not sure how you would get away from that and retain the respect that maybe the situation should warrant.
Hi Emma. There’s the rub: how do you promote and preserve a kind of silent reverence in places like the Tower of London when the very manner in which it is presented as a tourist destination belies such an approach. The sheer volume of visitors to places like this precludes any easy options it seems…
You make a very good point, exhibits like the Tower of London and Auschwitz should be eye opening and emotional and not a fun day out. It’s quite mad to think that people are making terrible events in history into something to do that day. It’s these reminders that stop us going back to the dark ages and give reason to fight for human rights!!!
Thanks Katrinamillen. Actually, when I was thinking about the idea of bringing children to see torture exhibits, it occurred to me that a likely response would be something along the lines of it being a good educational experience.
Were that the case, then why not go a step further and have working demonstrations to show how these devices worked in practice! Something about the throng of visitors and the general excited demeanour at play in these places smacks of the public executions of old…
Demonstrations would be a really good idea it would certainly be more educational and would emphasise the horrors that people have come to learn about.
Hi KatrinaMillen. Hmmm…let’s not get back to demonstrations again — we had enough of them during the Middle Ages…
Haha I didn’t mean real one’s i meant actor types
I’m relieved…! Still, wouldn’t it highlight the dubious nature of making these sorts of places tourist favourites if actors were in fact employed. In the Tower of London, they’d look strange enough, but in Auschwitz…well, it would seem all the more outrageous…
Very true, I suppose it would be good for educational purposes for people to kind of see the true horror of what happened, but at the same time it would make it more touristy and less historical
We already have a place to recreate the experience you longed for – it’s called Hackney.
Really, really agree. Same with the Titanic. I wrote a post referencing that very thing. Profiting from tragedy.
I understand your argument perfectly because I have shared the same sentiment when visiting certain tourist attractions. I felt guilty that I was enjoying a tourist visit in a place where people were once subjected to harsh treatment……However, I once visited a place where they re-enacted what actually went on in that place we were visiting. Our guide was an actor and our tour group were all part of the skit. It was scary at times (b/c our guide was so believable), but got the point across of what it was really like for people at that time and that was EXACTLY the intention. That tourist experience was by far the most memorable, educational and emphatic one I’ve ever had! I would recomment it to anyone visiting that area!
Congrats on being FP!
Many thanks, eh, ‘Things You Realize…’! Part of the ambivalence of these places for me involves the dilemma of whether or not repeated exposure to such devices and practices — particularly in the casual jollity of a tourist experience — in the end ‘educates’ or ‘anesthetizes’. The kids that ghosted through the torture exhibition have most likely seen tv programmes and played computer games where a sort of cartoon violence is par for the course. Will the torture exhibition be assimilated in the same way? Can it still shock or provoke?