Should Nazi Extermination Camps Be Demolished ....

[naomi24]

.... and holocaust memorial exhibitions abandoned?

Is visiting these places just sick - or is it important to maintain them along with all the evidence they preserve ... lest we forget?

Have you visited such a place and, if so, your thoughts and impressions.

[Calicogirl]

...and I'm hoping you don't drink Fanta, take pictures with anything Kodak, use and IBM computer or use any drugs or medicines produced by or researched by Bayer...

[sanmac]

No, the German extermination camps should not be demolished or abandoned, not should they become merely tourist attractions. And using overly-imaginative phrases such as "...tasting the same air that millions of victims tasted ..." is just too overly melodramatic. And, jordyboy, I cannot really understand why you apologized for stating your opinion.

[Calicogirl]

Sanmac //And using overly-imaginative phrases such as "...tasting the same air that millions of victims tasted ..." is just too overly melodramatic.//
Stop acting like a crass Gibbon. Just a thought.

[JimF]

"I cannot really understand why you apologised for stating your opinion".

Well said! I've never understood why people start their post with "Sorry, but..." as if they're ashamed of having a mind of their own.

[bodeker]

I think they should be kept so people don't forget what happened.

[david small]

Preserve for posterity that future generations may see for themselves to what wretched and depraved depths their fellow humans can plummet to. Also to show to what heights the human spirit can soar.

[Zacs-Master]

Freddie Starr’s complete act erased from history too!


So it wouldn’t be all bad.

[pixie374]

JimF, I doubt they are ashamed, or they wouldn't post at all... more likely they might realise that some people may be offended, and that is not their intention.

[sanmac]

If we didn't post because it might offend someone, AB would be even more silent than it is at the present.

[woofgang]

pixie I think sometimes its a cop out along the same lines of "I am not racist/sexist/homophobic etcet etcet etcet but"

[Rockrose]

I think they should remain but not as a tourist destination.
There is a lot more I’d like to say but I fear it would be against Site Rules.

[bhg481]

The difference between reading about the camps and visiting them is like the difference between listening to a CD and going to a live concert or watching Match of the Day and going to a live match. The content is the same but the atmosphere is completely different.

[ichkeria]

I don’t see the point in keeping them unless people can visit them.

[hereIam]

I personally would not want to visit them, but I absolutely believe that they should remain as testament to man's inhumanity to man, always.

[Jordyboy9]

I said sorry to calicogirl as I made out everyone going to see the ovens and gas chambers were perverted ghouls
I didn’t think of the Jewish people like her who went as a pilgrimage to remember,I still think anyone going as a day out or part of a holiday is a ghoulish pervert

[Khandro]

I have the Times Literary Supplement here from June 21st which happens to have an article; 'My Business Class Trip to Auschwitz'

I quote; 'Approaching Auschwitz-Birkenau, near the village of Oswiecim we pass a MacCafe & a KFC Drive-Thru & then there's an enormous car-park - dozens of coaches- & a complex system of entry. You get equipped with a set of headphones & a tiny receiver & before you know it you're in the camp wandering around. There are thousands of people; a feeling of barely contained chaos. At various points, people are asked not to film or take selfies, but they continue to film & take selfies.
At lunchtime I buy a cheese & tomato sandwich from a snack bar in the car park ..................... there's nowhere to sit so we squat down on the floor. After lunch, it's a 5 minute drive to the gas chambers which are fenced off by white plastic chain-link fencing.'

I think it's called "Dark Tourism". (The writer actually went to accompany a Jewish friend who had lost relatives in the holocaust & felt the need of a companion.)

[sanmac]

Jordyboy, you mention "pilgrimage". I think that you're stretching it a little to imply that the German death/concentration/extermination camps are religious shrines.

[NellieMay]

Thanks for posting that Khandro. It makes one wonder about human kind. Selfies! Unbelievable!

[bhg481]

Auschwitz, of course, is not in Germany. None of the German ones I have visited have felt at all commercialised, neither have the Austrian or French ones.

[Calicogirl]

//Jordyboy, you mention "pilgrimage". I think that you're stretching it a little to imply that the German death/concentration/extermination camps are religious shrines.//
Alright I'll bite Sanmac since you like a 'lively' site and not one where people don't share their opinions.
It's a pilgrimage in a cultural sense. Had the war been lost I would be unlikely to exist, my beautiful, talented, kind and wonderful grandmother would have likely gone to her death when aged 6 or 7 years old along with the whole of the rest of my family on my mother's side. You think we are being 'overdramatic' for trying to tap into anything that might be left of the people who went before us and who were robbed of their right to life by an efficient and organised evil that stalked all of the civilised world? You don't understand the well of emotion and sense of duty to live the best life possible because they could not. That's okay you don't have to. You don't even have to hold your tongue and can blab your own subjective opinion on the subject, but neither do you get to to tell other people what their thoughts and feelings should be regarding the Shoah. That is not your business.