My Trip to Auschwitz (Long with lots of pictures)

[SField]

I have very mixed feelings about the holocaust and how it has been turned into a book and film industry, not to mention the countless monuments and museums. We are in absolutely no danger of running out of any of them. If any of you had any concept of how many books and films about the holocaust there are in various stages of production, you might vomit.

Despite this massive amount of attention, given that it is probably the single most well documented human tragedy in history, and despite all the lamenting and sappy gestures that people make to appear sympathetic, we still see instances of genocide in the world occurring, and often at the hands of regimes far less powerful than the Nazis. Everyone in this thread and obviously every other person who has just read a book about, or seen a film, or been to a museum, or been to Auschwitz or Buchenwald etc... goes on and on about the horror and how deeply affected they are... and yet Rawanda happened with spectacular speed and efficiency. There has been more since.

Threads like this and other examples of people's attention for this subject are on one hand very important, but it also leads me to question our collective sincerity for human suffering. At the end of the day, we don't have to do **** about the holocaust. You can sit there and cry in some museum and feel good about yourself for thinking that it's really awful. However when there are current offenses against mankind, we tend to not get nearly as worked up about it, nor do we take the kind of action we say we would in the case of the holocaust. I think most of us are guilty of this at some point and it's an important question to consider. Ultimately Auschwitz isn't useful at all if it doesn't succeed in inspiring people to defy those who would like to bring about similar circumstances. So far, I don't really think it does.

I have actually visited Auschwitz and Buchenwald. I've also been to Cambodia at Tuol Sleng and Cheong Ek, and was in Rwanda with my father not too long after the atrocities there. I certainly was affected like everyone else, it's a very eerie experience and the Nazi death camps, due to their state of preservation, makes them especially grotesque to visit.

 

[imhotep]

^ I pretty much agree with everything you wrote.

Originally Posted by SField

Threads like this and other examples of people's attention for this subject are on one hand very important, but it also leads me to question our collective sincerity for human suffering.
I think the main determining factor in whether people give enough of a damn to do anything has a lot to do with whether they see the injustices committed in their own backyard or not. Obviously the holocaust doesn't fall into this category (from a North American perspective), but it has become such a part of our history through museums/movies/schooling/etc, that it can be considered to be very close to us. If they also included discussion of present day atrocities in elementary or high school classes, along with supporting field trips, perhaps people might feel differently. But I don't know where one can draw the line in where they distance themselves. The amount of suffering in the world inflicted by humans on each other and other animals is enormous.

 

[globetrotter]

good thread, thanks

 

[madmike]

I'm very impressed by this thread, Scrumhalf.

Being of Eastern European Jewish lineage, my grandparents had all suffered through the atrocities of the Holocaust, losing many of their family members. My grandmother, in particular, survived the horrors or Auschwitz-Birkenau. I can still almost clearly see the tattoo the Nazis put on her arm, in an attempt to diminish her identity to nothing more than a number. Though the tragedies she witnessed were no doubt traumatizing on an unimaginable scale, she kept the tattoo on her arm and would often show it to me, stressing that some things must never be forgotten.

I, as well as many others I'm absolutely sure, appreciate your having taken the time to document your visits and inform others of this dark period, which was an unfortunate example of the deepest depths of human cruelty and apathy. By informing others, it's people like you that may weaken the causative agents of such tragedies, including baseless hatred.

I commend you on starting this thread!

 

[madmike]

P.S. I don't think I know any Holocaust survivors that wouldn't be touched by this thread. I'm sure none would dismiss it as "themeparking", as was suggested earlier by "Ben Gurion", who is borrowing the name of a man who undoubtedly would have disagreed with his statements.

 

[origenesprit]

Haunting photos. Thanks for posting them, truly thought provoking (as SField shows).

 

[Eason]

Thanks for your story and your photos. As a "Jew" with a distaste for religion and pointless ceremonies, I usually distance myself from the genocide of WW2 and the Jewish community at large, despite being particularly educated about it. This has brought all that history back to me.

+I particularly agree with SField.

 

[GQgeek]

Good thread.

+1 to SField.

I honestly wish there was a body both willing and able to deal with stuff like Rwanda and Darfur, but infringing on other countries' sovereignty opens a big can of worms.

 

[acidboy]

deleted

 

[Gutman]

Thanks for posting these.

 

[lawyerdad]

Since this has been revived, belated thanks to scrumhalf. Furthermore, can I suggest we not trash the thread by going down the road of debating what could, or should be done about instances like Darfur or Rwanda, or whether they're akin to, or worse than, or not fairly compared to, the Holocaust, or each other, or whatever? Those discussions really belong in another thread, in my view.

 

[acidboy]

you're absolutely right, ldad. my apologies.

 

[lawyerdad]

Originally Posted by acidicboy

you're absolutely right, ldad. my apologies.

You actually made that post while I was still typing mine. I just foresaw how things were likely to go if we started down that path . . .

 

[c3cubed]

Originally Posted by Scrumhalf

Wow... I am glad to see that so many people have found this thread interesting. It makes the work writing the posts and uploading the pictures worth it.

Not only do I understand the effort that goes into uploading the posts and the accompanying editorial, you accomplished it with careful consideration and a sense of poetry.

I returned from Japan a few weeks ago, more specifically, a special journey to Hiroshima.

Perhaps one day, I'll find the time to do a pictorial of Hiroshima as you have done here.

A voyage to these places - is remarkable, as upon returning home, one is not the same person.

You're a good person, sir.