Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/03/20/auschwitz-asks-visitors-to-sto.html
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Looks like someone needs to get back to work
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This, x 100.
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What? Next thing they are going to tell me you can’t play hop scotch on tombstones. I mean, what is even the point of visiting Grandma if you can’t have any fun? /s
Seriously though, do people not understand that some places are meant to be somber?
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What … what is wrong with people …
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Humanity has a very short attention span. A couple of generations removed is enough time to dull the impact of one of the most tragic periods of human history. Millions dead in German camps, millions dead in Russian camps, uncountable civilian deaths to carpet bombing and nuclear weapons, the rise of chemical warfare with mustard gas, all too long ago to care about anymore, I guess.
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Meanwhile, Vox Day’s friend Owen Benjamin had his YouTube channel demonetized because of antisemitic content.
He has now gravitated to Vox Day’s alternate site, and one of the videos there is a (non-)apology to Jewish people.
I won’t link it, because Vox likes counting clicks, and this type of vile hatred doesn’t need an audience. But if you want to know what type of sicko trades in hatred, I can direct you there.
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It’s a pet peeve of mine that people do stupid shit in historical places where it makes no sense. That people do this at Auschwitz is just, just, unforgivable.
Historians you need to crank it up a notch or two.
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Other people would have no need of my pictures. There are already far better ones than I could take.
I would have no need of my pictures, because I doubt I would forget.
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I don’t think we can blame historians for this. It’s hard to compete with a steady diet of Keeping Up With The Kardashians and the endless word salad of our Dimwit-In-Chief. After a while, the brain seals itself into a protective shell and refuses to allow in any new information.
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Not blaming historians. They just need to turn up the volume on how horrible it all was. People forget all too easily.
Then again some people go into National Parks and cut down or deface 1000 yr old Ponderosa Pines or knock over million yr old rock formations.
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Fair enough, my bad.
Or they never learn the lessons in the first place.
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Cameras of any kind should be banned at Auschwitz and similar sites, exceptions for accredited historians only.
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Part of me wants to make sick jokes about those self-absorbed dumb asses but then I think that’s not exactly cool either.
Not only is this respectful, it seems dangerous. Has anyone ever been injured or hurt around those tracks?
Owen Benjamin is the guy who’s always complaining that his livelihood as a comedian is being threatened because audiences don’t appreciate racist jokes anymore.
Imagine how upset he’d be if he had entered that profession back in the day when minstrel was still mainstream or when comedians could still get a laugh pretending to be a thickly accented Asian man while wearing fake buck teeth and coke-bottle glasses.
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I think a big reason we Americans are the way we are is that there has not been a war fought on our soil within the timeframe of our cultural memory. We didn’t grow up with our parents and grandparents telling us of the destruction and rebuilding of the city we grew up in, wartime atrocities, food rationing and general scarcity during and after the war. War has become an abstract concept that happens to other people.
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I’ve always found it bizarre that almost all package holidays to Poland include a visit to Auschwitz almost as if it is just another place to be ticked off a long list. Poland has a long history and plenty of historic sites and areas of natural beauty without turning an extermination camp into a tourist trap.
By all means arrange trips to Auschwitz, but go as a destination in itself to learn more, to mourn and to ensure this never happens again, but not as a day-trip sandwiched between a visit to a brewery and a walking tour of Krakow.
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