I was 16(ish) when I visited Dachau (Must have been around '87). We all took pictures of the various parts of the grounds including the more macabre and solemn parts. As I recall the only “selfie/posed” photos we took were at the entrance signage in small groups.
We are in a different time where these are the types of photos they take. The question is where are the adults in their lives (and I know not all the people doing this are kids). Ignorance is not an excuse but it is a reason. I suspect they really just haven’t been told or taught better.
I like what @wait_really posted at the top. Which gets to the John Oliver LWT piece about public shaming. THAT is the good and effective kind of public shaming that should happen.
I think we are at that awkward transition phase where the events of the second world war are starting to slip past the point of recent history. Nobody scolds tourists for having fun on a Jack the Ripper tour of London because it’s so long ago. I bet that eventually it will be the same for WWII tourists.
Might some people be balancing on the tracks just because they can’t process what happened there? Sort of like laughing at a funeral (which I have done).
I agree with your sentiment that the transition of time makes things less somber. And indeed it is cultural significance that keeps the memory of something alive.
However I would say that something like Auschwitz is way different than an alley where Jack the Ripper had killed a victim (there are some cities where every alley was a murder scene at some point). It is even different than a battle field such as Gettysburg or Normandy Beach. The difference being most of these examples are scenes of brief violence, either as part of a larger conflict, or lone attacks. But places like Auschwitz were places of calculated, organized genocide, constructed to be ruthlessly efficient. I think their cultural and historical significance is certainly on another tier.
The further we move away from lived memory of the holocaust, the more stuff like this will happen. This is why oral histories are so important, documenting what happened through the individuals who experienced it will help to remind future generations that this happened to real people…
Time-Life once had a series of hard cover photo books on WW1 and 2. They were full of all the horrible photos and descriptions that you can possibly imagine. Perhaps it’s time for a reprint.
I remember looking at them as a teenager and feeling sick to my stomach.
That kind of thing helps, as do films about these sorts of events, and books, and comics, etc. But historians can bring much needed nuance to such things as well. I think that often with the mainstream public engagement with the Holocaust (and world war 2 more generally) coming through films and popular media, we get a distorted image - that nazis were inhuman monsters instead of being human beings committing atrocities (and all the complicated reasons that go along with that), or that the Germans were somehow unique in Europe with regards to their treatment of the Jews (when antisemitism was common in Europe and the US), or that we no longer have to worry about such things, because we’ve moved beyond such things, or that the people who died fatalistically accepted their fate, etc. The historical reality is always much more complicated than people understand when viewed through the lens of American pop culture.
I suppose it make sense one may want to capture images of the buildings and area etc. But I don’t see the point of selfies and group photos. For once, it isn’t all about you.
Then again, I am like that in general. I rarely want a picture of me in front of something famous. I may want a pic of something famous, but I don’t need to be in it. In most cases, pics of me you can thank my ex wife for.
There does seem to be a difference in photos that are “Check out this interesting place” and “Look at me! This photo is significant because I’m in it!”
This is against the grain of a number of comments here and may make some of you uncomfortable.
Beyond the obvious and unfortunate necessity to spell out policies at holocaust memorial sites, is there an approach that can be made to the people who are doing this that would help build understanding and sensitivity? Not about what historians and others are doing and teaching outside of these sites, but I mean right on site in that moment.
It is very uncomfortable for anyone to process the level of inhumanity that occurred at Auschwitz, and to process that it was done consciously by other human beings who aren’t all that different from ourselves. Some of the actors and enablers are the ancestors of people who are now visiting the site. Separating them out as monsters is a way of assuring one another -falsely- that it can never happen again.
A program can be tailored for the visitors who act like this… once you do this kind of thing, you must spend 30 minutes at a talk or presentation that has been designed in response. That could be made the law of the land. It could include survey/q&a to to document what they did and said about it, reach out to these people in the future, and gain some insights on what approaches in response made the most lasting impressions.
Mass tourism coupled with attention-span-destroying technologies… The whole world has just become a “to-do-list” and the goal of travelling is now to add a little flag to your instagram profile… My cousin is a hardcore-anarchist-punk, who once tagged a war memorial, and was sentenced to some community service (or payback, depends on your country I guess). He admited later that it was a stupid thing to do, whatever one’s convictions are… But at least, he did it from his convictions, and not to feed a dumb-*ss social app…
I think your suggestion is much more refined and thoughtful than the one I was thinking of. I was thinking that they should line those tracks with informative signs/placards that prominently feature the horrifying historical photos of the Nazis’ victims. If someone still can’t resist doing ducklips in front of those, then politely but firmly escort them off the site.
In fairness, my first thought was “electrify the rail.” But I like your thinking. It seems to be a struggle in monument design. If US politicians could chime in, they’d insist on bronzes of US forces liberating the camps.
This is all kinda relatable. I visited Toul Sleng S-21 prison/death camp -now museum awhile back. I found myself in ‘tourist mode’ unintentionally- taking photos and whatnot.
About halfway through the tour the gravity/reality of the situation finally sunk in. I put away my camera and attempted to understand and cope with what went down there. Horrifying.
That place shook me too.
I couldn’t do any disaster tourism for a while after that with the exception of The War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh *shudders.
The War Remnants Museum is messed up.
Of course - it’s what you expect for something that used to be named ‘The Exhibition House for US and Puppet Crime’. Some good pics online.
