Why am I going to Auschwitz?

Not Auschwitz, but Dachau. Yes it was horrible, as it should be when seeing the terrible things human beings can inflict on each other. I went with a group, to hopefully learn. And at the same time to honor those who suffered and died there. After that experience it brought home, more than any reading I had done, the dangers of fascism and...... I'm going to stop myself there before I veer into politics.

We hope to go to Auschwitz some day. Like you, Arlington National Cemetery and the American Cemetery in Normandy, along with Dachau and the Douaumont Ossuary, etc. all hit us with such emotion. Just the feeling we had standing at Dachau knowing what happened there can’t be explained. While we were there, a class of grade school children were there as part of their curriculum. Unlike some places in the USA where they remove reminders of horrible things in the past. When we left Dachau, neither my husband nor I said a word for quite sometime, as there were no words to express our experience. Good for you to go to pay your respects. Vacations don’t always mean all fun and beautiful things. Sometimes it’s those horrific places that stay with us the longest and make us appreciate those who lost their lives.

I have not been although I do plan to go some day. For me, it is about paying my respects, learning, and never forgetting, The second time I went to Dachau I was able to spend a little more time there. I was surprised to learn of a very long building behind the kitchen. It held prisoners that were taken better care of (relative) to the thousands of others that have passed through its gates.
Last year we visited the Anne Frank House and it was there (I think) that I learned of the thousands of support camps that supported all of the main camps.
Being a child of the 60's I was raised with war movies that showed WWII. Until we visited Normandy in 2019 did the enormity of what the D-Day soldiers faced truly hit home. Unfathomable.

Mike, you've raised what I think is a very important question.

Auschwitz or Dachau or the Warsaw ghetto or any of the sites listed here (https://www.un.org/en/holocaustrememberance/additionalresources/museums) don't exist so we can be brought to tears. It's not about us.

We go to Arlington or Normandy to pay tribute to those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the name of freedom.

We go to holocaust sites because it's critically important that we understand what happened, so that the world does not forget that it happened, and to ensure that it can never happen again.

When I was 16, I got job as a stock boy at a deli owned by survivor of Auschwitz. Jack was a joyous man. Always smiling, great with customers and employees alike. He was also president of a survivors group and other survivors were always coming into the deli, speaking yiddish, eating and chatting it up. I became friends with Jack and his two sons (and a daughter). Unless you caught a rare moment, you’d never knew what Jack went through. But the scars were there and they were very apparent with his sons— both of who died before Jack. The pain is generational.

When I went to Auschwitz I cried. I think everyone should go. This should never have happened and fascism is scourge we must never forget,

Oh, it can definitely happen again.

"Arizona State Senator cheers on rightwing Germans with the Nazi theme song"

https://boingboing.net/2024/09/03/arizona-state-senator-cheers-on-rightwing-germans-with-the-nazi-theme-song.html

Hello Big Mike

I went to one of the Death Camps back in the 1960's. I took pictures and on a train or plane, I was sitting next to a German man who was looking at all my pictures of my travels around Europe.. I remember feeling uncomfortable when he came to my pictures of the camp. I did not want hm to feel that I was blaming him. I did not want to make him uncomfortable.

He looked at the pictures and said to me in a strong and forceful manner "We were all Nazis. All of us .Don't let anyone ever tell you different" To this day, I remember.

You are going to bear witness. You are going to see with your very eyes for that is how we remember and honor those who died whether in Dachau or Auschwitz as well as those who survived.

I went to Dachau about 17 years ago and I still get anxious and my voice gets shaky when I talk about it. I'll be going to Auschwitz when I go to Poland. I don't know how to articulate 'why.' But I'm following this thread with interest.

bostonphil7, that's a powerful memory.

Phil, thank you for those powerful words.

Appreciate everyone's honest, heartfelt thoughts here.

In 2018 we went to what was the only concentration camp in France, Natzweiler Struthof, near Strasbourg. In our case, we were going to acknowledge and remember my spouse’s aunt, who as a Canadian nurse in WW2, went there at the end of the war to provide care to those who remained. She, like all of his uncles and another aunt who served overseas, rarely spoke of their experiences and the horrors of it all. My spouse had immense respect for his aunt (and her husband who was a commando in France) and he wanted to honour her and all of the others who had a role in caring for the survivors.

I am somewhat dreading it but I'm going and prepared to be
overwhelmed.

I haven't been to a concentration camp, but I have been to Oradour-sur-Glane which may be the most important site I've ever visited on a vacation. I knew nothing about it before arriving and thought it was simply going to be a short break to see a monument. Was I wrong. The emotions I felt varied from shock to anger.

Am I really going for some maudlin or voyeuristic reason? i sure hope
not.

I've always wanted to see a concentration camp and I won't deny that it may have been for morbid fascination, but after experiencing Oradour-sur-Glane, my attitude is more that I should see it as a reminder of what can happen.

Big Mike, this might be your most thoughtful and well written post yet.

This past spring I visited Vilnius. I am a student of history and visited both the KGB Museum and the Jewish Museum. Both are detailed museums showing the horrors and hardships of living under both the Nazis and the Soviets. The KGB museum is in the old KGB headquarters and you can tour the cells where prisoners were held, the torture rooms and the killing room.

It got me thinking. How lucky was I to be brought up in a country where I didn't have to worry about some secret police picking me up and killing me because they felt like it. I did't have to worry about being tortured because I disagreed with the regime.

Let's hope it stays that way.

I went to Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Terezín to see for myself what happened. I went to history museums, such as those in Nuremberg, Frankfurt, Erfurt, Warsaw, Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn to learn how and why it happened.

The result, which I hadn't anticipated, is that I see current events with a cautionary filter from those historical perspectives.

Am I really going for some maudlin or voyeuristic reason?

Big Mike, I have read your posts over the years. Nope you arent the sort that would do it out of voyeurism. I will send you a PM in a minute. Not something I am comfortable posting.

It is not something to dread. It will be at a minimum sobering. It is a chance to connect with the victims - you will see an entire wall filled with their photographs, the date they arrived and the date they died.

Only the buildings and topography are left. The horror will exist only in your mind. The sorting area at the end of the train tracks in Buchenwald can be just as haunting as going through the re-created gas chamber, if the docent paints a vivid picture of how the arrivals were assigned their fate.

The important thing is to come away with a commitment to ensure that it can never happen again.

I have reservations for 9/27. My friends on the tour refuse to go with me. We were together at Dachau and both said they wish they had never gone. I also visited Terezin years ago. I’m not sure how I’ll feel.

Auschwitz is only architecture. It simply does not convey the horror of what happened. That’s a failure. You tour through buildings. Look at ovens and hanging posts and it is brick and poles and holes. Architecture. Admittedly it is hard to convey such horror inflicted on humans. Perhaps a tour whereby you spend time inside a basement room 10x10 with twenty or more people. Ot overnight crammed into a bunkhouse side by side on wood slats, close. And no dinner or breakfast included. Or you get to be stripped naked in front of others. The experience. Because the buildings and the signs do nothing to show what happened. Not even any graphic real life films of the time are shown. Sure it is horrible and may be disturbing and you may look away. But, it was reality. You might then leave your Auschwitz tour with more than the thought of getting back so you can have dinner and a beer.
All the years and our safe tourist lives have put a huge buffer between us and that. You know it has become only history and like watching a movie. A bad movie. Why say that? Because it has happened again. Rwanda springs to mind. Other places also. Statin’s gulags.
Think about it. Auschwitz is a tourist spot and required to pay respect but hardly conveys anything else in its enormity of human abuse against others.
Maybe it is the best we can do as societies is to build or preserve our failures as societies and humans. Memorials to our collective failures.

I went through school in the 50's and 60's in Chicago. American history never got past 1900, world history class ended around the same time. My parents weren't religious and their families immigrated before WWI. I don't know if I even heard about the holocaust until I read Exodus (Leon Uris, not the bible :-). From there I slowly began a deep dive into my Jewish roots and religion which brought me to make aliyah (immigrate to Israel) in my early 20's. Over the years, I learned more and more about my people's journey.

Years later I began traveling to Europe. I have been to nearly every holocaust museum and memorial in the places I've been. I never felt that visiting a death camp would add meaning for me. The closest I came was a day trip to Terezin while I was in Prague. It was inspiring to see how much the prisoners strove to treasure their humanity when they must have sensed their struggles were doomed. Was it sad, no. What was sad for me was walking through the Jewish quarter in Prague and seeing the relics of what was a thriving Jewish community not so many years ago. It was sad to see the medieval remnants of thriving Jewish communities in southern Germany that contributed so much to learning and culture in Europe. My guide, a professor of Jewish history, said that visiting much of Europe is visiting the graveyard of Judaism.

I applaud you for wanting to honor the victims. I hope it is meaningful for you. Maudlin, voyeuristic, I say not.

And thank you for the discussion.

Well, I added one memory in an earlier post. I was not certain that I should add the next but here goes. I hope that it might touch someone

I was born in 1945 and grew up in a working class, immigrant neighborhood of Boston (Dorchester.)

We received some of the survivors of the death camps and I remember two. I have never been able to forget these two.

One older man owned a small deli on Blue Hill Ave. I remember that he had numbers on his arm and he never ever smiled. Never. Now I would decribe him as haunted. For whatever it is worth, we kids got to pick out our own pickle out of the pickle barrel.

And the other male was younger. He was a tall lanky male. And he too always looked what I now call haunted. I remember him with his arms wrapped around his body and rocking a lot. We kids went to the afternoon matinee at the neighborhood movie theater on Saturday. He would be there, alone, with his arms wrapped around his body sitting in the seat and rocking back and forth. His feet would be up against the seat in front of him while he rocked.

Sadly, we kids being kids. called him Popeye. I think we saw him as "crazy" and maybe made fun of him.

This was a time period when we did not fully understand the horrors of what these so called survivors had been through and we did not let them talk about their experiences.

Maybe tht is why we now visit the death camps so that we can better understand what the victims of the death camps experienced, both those who did not survive anf those who supposedly did survive. We are speaking for them and listening to them. It took a long time to listen.

marckcw, your last line in particular is spot on, imo.

Lane, you're right of course. It's not about us, but maybe what we can take with us and transfer to future generations.

CWSocial: A "cautionary tale" indeed.

Diane, we'll be there Sep 14 and I hope to post a review prior to your visit. Mary doesn't really want to go, but she will despite lingering memories of Dachau in the 1980s. She couldn't make it through Schindler's List.

treemoss, add in 4-plus hour roll calls in frigid weather with practically no clothing, being ill and ice-ridden, exhausted beyond belief, and starving to death. I don't know how an average person could endure that just once for 30 minutes without collapsing. Add in the stench and random beat downs for moving or even existing.

Chani, appreciate your personal recollections.

Phil, seems like a wonderful place to grow up in some respects. You make a cogent point about respecting and remembering. Like myself, I'd sadly suspect that most young kids make fun of people they don't understand. In that sense I get a kick out of those "No Regrets" bumper stickers and tattoos I see around here, because if you have no regrets, you have no conscience, or are not human. All we can do is move forward from those times and work to be better people with every year we have left. A life goal of "being kind" may sound trite and weak, but in fact it requires a lot of strength relative to blurting out whatever is on your mind, often venomous and hurtful.

I will be going there in Oct.

Having been to Sachsenhausen 3x, Ravensbrück and Bergen-Belsen 2x, Dachau, Strotthof & Hadamar Mental Institution, 1x and some of the many sub-camps around Frankfurt, it is important and meaningful for me to finally go to Auschwitz.

In 2 weeks, I will be assisting the city of Frankfurt with their program, Return of Survivors and /or their Families. It is vital and necessary for me to have as much education as possible about these subjects, whether it is the deportations, the Concentration camps, the Children Transports, the Ghettos, the destruction of the Synagogues, the "legality" of everything the Nazis did, or the "Jewish Houses" in Germany and so much more. This group of people either survived any or all of these things or their parents or grandparents did. I must know as much as possible.

I saw where trains pulled in, which seemed like a small area given the magnitude of death that went through it. And there is where Jack and his father were separated from his mother and his sister. He never saw them again. I saw the barracks, again smaller than I had imagined. That is where Jack slept with his father. I saw the exhibits in the barely lit rooms where they had piles of shoes and hair and luggage. I imagined some of that hair had to belong to Jack’s mother. I saw where they were crowded into a space, stripped and gassed.

Jack’s father survived a few months before Jack lost him. He got dysentery, couldn’t work and they took him away never to be seen again, Jack was 14 and never understood why he survived and they didn’t.

There are millions of stories like Jack’s. 

We need to remember this so it doesn't happen again.

It's not something that would interest me. I know enough about what happened without feeling I have to go and look at the scene. Not to diminish the honest, heartfelt feelings of those have posted further up the thread, or the death and suffering of those that had to endure, but I find such things morbid and ghoulish. There's oppression and genocide being carried out right now in the name of imperialism and religion, in 2024, under all our noses and the nation states we call home are complicit. I think it's ridiculous to suggest that we must remember by visiting these sites and that somehow is some way of preventing it from happening again, when in fact it's happened many times in various places around the world since, and continues to go on to this day.

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

Pastor Martin Niemöller, 1947

In our small lives we can actually do something soon to derail such possibilities nearby. That is to vote, and only one way, because there really is no choice.

I think more is done by personal action than is doen by passing it along to an elected official.
Leave the idology and politics out of it.
Remember history and speak up and take an active role when you see it repeating itsself.
Step up, speak up and take an active role when you see an act. If everyone did, fewer would feel entitled to be racists.
Normalize your relationships with all parts of society so there is no "others".
Get rid of the labels of those people and these people and see the world as Us.
Only then do politicians react.
If you havent personally and with conviction actively participated in the solution, you are not helping to end the disease.

I've been to Dachau twice and Mauthausen once. I visit to never forget. I live in a very conservative state that has people who admit they are holocaust deniers. I want to be able to show pictures of the ovens if I ever have the occasion to have a discussion with one.

I really appreciate this thoughtful post and the thoughtful replies. It's all making me think. Which is good.

I'll share, too, that this post went up just days after my husband and I happened to have a conversation about just this -- whether we'd go to Auschwitz when we one day go to Poland. I'd taken it as a given; my husband, not so much (for reasons mostly laid out throughout this thread, none of which are about avoiding the horror).

I've been thinking about the tour buses that would shuttle tourists through the Lower Ninth Ward, a predominantly Black neighborhood with high poverty and underinvestment, following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans that hit this ward particularly hard. Those tourists, gawking through the window at lives and a community destroyed, certainly felt they were honoring the tragedy. And yet it didn't help a community rebuild, and it certainly didn't fundamentally change anything about the racial inequity that persists. And even though I grant each of those tourists the benefit of the doubt that they felt they were doing something good, something important, it was, at the core, voyeurism.

Through the conversation with my husband and now this thread, I admit I fear that there could be a similar kind of voyeuristic moral superiority that could be present for me in going to Auschwitz ... all while contentedly living my life while fascism and other horrors -- including genocide; including antisemitism --are happening all around me.

I went to Auschwitz and Birkenau because I needed to. I'm not myself Jewish, but I have many close Jewish friends, and I attend Passover seders and Hanukkah dinners with some of them. My heart grieves for the victims of Naziism, Jewish and otherwise. The visits to the concentration camp (Auschwitz) and the death camp (Birkenau) were at once unutterably sad and uplifting: the sadness is obvious, but uplifting because so many people have made it their life's work to make sure the evil of Naziism cannot be forgotten.

And so I needed to go. Don't need to think more about it than that. These atrocities can never, never, never be allowed to happen again. This has served to form my political beliefs, about which I will say no more.

As others have said, Auschwitz is both too much, and it is not enough. I realized while visiting that due to my heritage I could have had family members on both sides of the horror that took place there. I continue to reflect on that and my visit was a dozen years ago.

Hannah, I would just say that going to Auschwitz, unlike driving through the hurricane-ravaged ghetto, is helping to fund and preserve the site.

BigMike, absolutely. I could have, and perhaps should have, better specified all the (many) ways that the Ninth Ward tourism is entirely different than visiting Auschwitz. So much so, I hesitated even including those thoughts/reflections in my original comment.

I think, for me, the overlap of the Venn diagram really is in the possibility of thinking you're doing a good thing, the right thing, when maybe it's more complicated than that and deserves further interrogation.

That said, such interrogation should, IMO, result in absolutely not touring the Ninth Ward aboard a bus under any circumstances, while visiting Auschwitz could genuinely go either way, depending on one's personal intentions and motivations. I suspect, for almost all of us, doing such an interrogation could lead to an even deeper and richer meaningful experience in visiting Auschwitz.

Hannah, a lot of food for thought in your posts.

I interpret what you're saying is we should be thoughtful about it.

I'm a bit surprised the mayor of other government official didn't shut that tour bus down.

Wow, what a very powerful thread. Priceless comments and a very important poem. I still have a very vivid memory from some 30-40 years ago of seeing the wrought iron sign over Dachau:

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
-Santayana

Thank you all

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
-Santayana

I prefer:
"Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it; those who know history are doomed to watch others repeat it."

I grew up in Skokie, Illinois, a Chicago suburb which in the 1960's and 1970's had a very high Jewish population - something like 90% - many of them Holocaust survivors and their descendants. When the Nazis wanted to march in Skokie the anger, disbelief and fear was almost palpable. But what was wonderful was the community response. Not just from Skokie or from the Jewish population, but from the entire area. After a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision the Nazis were finally allowed to march, but they chose downtown Chicago, not Skokie. And they were outnumbered. About 20 Nazis actually marched while about 2000 Chicago area residents shouted them down.

I went to Dachau as part of my study abroad program in college. I did it for the friends and families I grew up with.

I’ve been to Dachau and Sachsenhausen and will say I also felt quite an impact from the Terror Hauz Muzeum in Budapest. People were weeping in places while touring it. Nobody likes to go to these places. ‘Attention must be paid’ is what always runs through my mind when I’m making the decision to go or not to go.

Why do I visit sacred places?

I have no personal connection to 9/11, and yet I visited Ground Zero when it was still The Pit. I will never forget the weight of silence where the Twin Towers once stood.

I am not in the military, and yet I have visited Arlington National Cemetery in America; WW1 battlefields in Belgium; the D-Day landing sites in France. All these places were consecrated with blood and agony. I will never forget the feeling the connection to all that humanity lost.

All these are sacred places where I did not rightfully belong: not survivor, not soldier. I made these visits to feel a connection with the events and to try to understand them better. I know, however, that I was both visitor and trespasser. Those places are not there for me. They are for others of deliberate connection. The door is open, the welcome is extended, but...

For this reason, I will never visit a concentration camp.

I hold absolutely no animosity to those who have or wish to, but I have not earned the right to step through the gates at Auschwitz. To me, the obscenity wrought in those camps was so singular in its evil that those places belong only to those who suffered and those who came after; they are the ultimate sacred places. Is there a connection to be made, an understanding to be had, by visiting? Yes there is. That same connection and understanding can be gained at the many Holocaust museums around the world. Is it the same? No. Then why shouldn't someone visit? Because some places need to be held absolutely sacred. They need to be held apart as to say "this place is not for you. It was paid for in blood and terror that was not yours. That is how horrific what happened here was. Look at this vacancy and know why it is here."

Again, I know millions have respectfully visited the camps and left moved; changed. This is the one gift that a visit to the camps can bestow, and it is a beautiful one. I also understand that this is in perfect opposition to my previous paragraph. After all, I visited Ground Zero when human remains were still being found, and not a single person died peacefully on 9/11. Should I have held Ground Zero equally sacrosanct? Is it 3,000 vs. 6 million? What about the battlefields? I have no answer for these questions, hypocrite though they seem to make me.

Complicated topic, complicated answer.

-- Mike Beebe

What I will do though, is refrain from taking photos. There are books with those. I do not need them for my FB page, my instagram or to show others at home what I saw. I find the photo takers to be the worst of the worst in all of these places. They have no business doing this.
There is not one good reason for taking a photo of an oven, the selection ramp, the mortuary, a pile of hair or suitcases. Not one.

I cannot argue with strong feelings against photos. And I do understand how disrespectfully they may be glamorized on Instagram or sensationalized on Facebook.

However, our site sponsored tour guide at Auschwitz (in 2018) encouraged photos. Encouraged us to share with others what we had seen.

I'm sure she didn't have glamor selfies in mind when she said that.

I went to Dachau and will continue to visit places like this so that I can help to keep the horror alive. So that I can let others know of the horror and the suffering I felt there. So that this never ever happens again.

treemoss and Gerry, I get what you are both saying and wholeheartedly agree. There are horrors happening in the world today and we need to do more to stop them. Voting is one way, certainly, but I would imagine that most people here on this forum would not forego this civic duty. Spreading the word is another, however, and keeping places like this alive helps to do that. It's not just for ourselves.

It's so we can continue to tell others that these horrors existed and will continue to exist unless we pay attention to what is going on around us in the world.

Well said, Mardee. Most important is keeping the memoriy alive for younger generations, Hopefully they can understand the horrors and realize that evil and hate doesn't die, it just has to be fought again and again. Like today.

Along those lines, I'm keeping this thread as a screenshot for posterity. In windows, just right click and choose "Take Screenshot", "Save Full Page", then "Download". I hope not, but this thread could go away.

I went to Auschwitz about ten years ago. It is a place I always wanted to see. Being there was my way of remembering and honoring the victims. They should never be forgotten.

I took some photos, and I’m glad I have them because it helps me remember the experience. There are some places photos are not permitted and rightly so. I would not have wanted to take photos in those places.

Everyone needs to decide for themselves whether or not to go and what is an appropriate way to remember what happened there.

My husband & I walked through the Mauthausen concentration camp during the RS Germany, Switzerland, Austria tour. I will never forget that experience. Yes, I knew about them, but walking inside one, hearing the stories from the guide, it’s unforgettable. I am not an emotional person, but when I walked out the heavy wood door, I reacted with pent up emotion & punched the door with my fist (yes, it hurt) - just something I was compelled to do for those who didn’t have the chance to walk back out of that door & horrific circumstance.

Our RS group stopped for lunch at a little town afterwards; none of us were talking. It was a very solemn experience for us all.

We also went to Normandy Beach on an independent trip and took a half-day tour of the sites. Again, a place we felt we should pay our respects for those who fought & died in the war. When we were walking on Omaha Beach, my husband turned around and faced the cliff that our men would have seen before them when they landed. His legs started to buckle under him, imagining that scene.

We should not forget the actions of the Polish resistance in documenting the horrors of the Holocaust during the war. I recently learned of the story of Witold Pilecki, a Polish resistance fighter who voluntarily allowed himself to be captured and sent to Auschwitz to gather evidence and organize resistance inside the camp. During his two and a half years there, he helped form an underground network, sent reports to the Allies, and documented German atrocities which were invaluable in the post-war trials of high ranking Nazis. After escaping Auschwitz in 1943, he continued to fight against the Germans during the Warsaw Uprising. Pilecki survived the war but was arrested by the Stalinist regime and executed by the Communists in 1948.

Witold's various reports from Auschwitz, know as Raport W, were not released to the public until after the fall of Communism in Poland. An English translation was later published in 2012 under the title The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery, I can recommend it.

What I will do though, is refrain from taking photos. There are books with those. I do not need them for my FB page, my instagram or
to show others at home what I saw. I find the photo takers to be the
worst of the worst in all of these places. They have no business doing
this.
There is not one good reason for taking a photo of an oven, the selection ramp, the mortuary, a pile of hair or suitcases. Not one.

I have to disagree. There are ways to photograph and post respectfully to show the importance of the locations. I'm not an avid user of social media, but the day of my visit to Oradour-sur-Glane I thought it important to post my visit with photos to explain what happened on that horrible day. Some people's conduct may give social media a bad rap, but it can be used responsibly to educate as well.

We go because it was horrible. And because it continues. And the first thing I saw front and center as I entered the display at Auschwitz was a suitcase with my family name it. Never forget.

I am leaving shortly for the RS Berlin, Prague, and Vienna tour. The tour will be visiting the Terezin concentration camp memorial. I was looking at the information about the site, and there was an opportunity to search the names of those interned there. On a whim I put in my maiden name. Up pops my name, Suzanne, and my maiden name, which is Dutch/German. Born 1926, arrived in 1944 from Ravensbruck. No Jewish roots that I’m aware of, but I did spend a year on a Kibbutz in Israel in my 20s. It’s kind of freaky. I will be exploring Terezin with great interest.
Denny I thought of you seeing your name on a suitcase.

travelerguy, good idea. You could also just hit Command + P and when the print menu pops up, save it as a PDF. The formatting will change a bit, but everything is still there.

I visited Auschwitz in 2015 and 2022. I considered my visit to be a duty, and I'd visit Auschwitz again if I'm ever in Poland.

A visit is of value because you would be acting as a witness of the Holocaust, even if the calamity happened almost 80 years ago. We live in an era of Holocaust denial and -- even worse -- the denial of objective fact. George Orwell, who's among the most eloquent resisters of totalitarian thought ever, argued persuasively that denial of objective fact is the surest sign of totalitarian politics. You're fortifying the human race by visiting Auschwitz.

Another key reason is Jews -- the primary victims of Auschwitz -- want people to visit the camp. You'd be serving as a bulwark against future genocides.

You might be surprised what you respond to. Two elements of my visit still stick in my head.

In Auschwitz I, artifacts are stored in the former barracks. In one barrack, the black-and-white photos of some 1,000 inmates are on display. These are reproductions of the actual photos that the Germans took of inmates. The faces are haunting. The Holocaust was no longer an abstraction after I saw those photos; it became real. I saw the eyes, the faces and hair. The other part that stuck with me was the separation platform in Auschwitz-Birkenau, the main extermination center. It was on the platform where families were separated -- some to the left for the gas chambers, the others to the right for hard labor and a bit more of life -- never to see each other again. It is quite moving. What will you respond to if you visit?

Another key reason to visit is to honor all service men and women who served in Allied forces during World War II. One of them was my dad who wasn't anywhere near Europe. Dad served on a destroyer in the US Navy during World War II. His ship earned five battle stars. In Auschwitz, I thought of dad and all the others who fought against fascism in Europe and Asia.

I strongly recommend a visit.

Mike, are you going so you can get an Auschwitz t-shirt, ball cap, or tote bag? Clearly, that’s not your intent, and you’re not a voyeur, going to an attraction.

In Austria many years ago, while my husband went to the site of the Mauthausen camp, I sat in a cafe in town. I couldn’t bring myself to see the horrible place. I’ve resolved that on our Poland trip this coming spring, I’m going to Auschwitz, as hard as it may be, to learn and to reflect.

Very late to this post.

In all my visits to historical sites of WWII whether it be concentration camps, Normandy battlegrounds or the court room in Nuremberg, the one thing it did for me was put things in perspective. All of these places taught me about the evil of some and the courage of many. These visits, as someone else noted, puts perspective on how lucky we all are to live in a free and democratic society.

Mike, I hope your visit was enlightening and you gained your own perspective. Nice post.

What I will do though, is refrain from taking photos. There are books
with those. I do not need them for my FB page, my instagram or to show
others at home what I saw. I find the photo takers to be the worst of
the worst in all of these places. They have no business doing this.
There is not one good reason for taking a photo of an oven, the
selection ramp, the mortuary, a pile of hair or suitcases. Not one.

The main reason is to make people remember. In order for the humankind not to repeat those moments of history for which we are ashamed.

I've been to three: Dachau, Auschwitz, & Mauthausen. I'd visit others given the opportunity. It's not an obscure piece of unimaginable history to me. I have known many, many people who survived WWII and the Holocaust, and I visit out of respect to them. Sadly, I don't think the world learned any lasting lesson from what happened there.

Go so you will always remember and never forget how far man can go when prejudice and blind following rule your life. Until I visited Auschwitz I did not have a grasp of how bad it was.

Just returned from both camps. Bring water and plan on walking a lot.
Glad we went in a small group tour (4). It’s hard co comprehend what happened. We are seeing the same level of hatred in mid East . We do forget…So we need many reminders so we can all try to love and not hate our fellow human beings.

Many years ago I was visiting Paris and met the grandfather of one of the neighbors. At the time, the 1980's, it was not unusual to meet people who had lived through the war. I asked him what it was like to be a young person living during that time. He showed me his arm that had a tattoo of a number and he said he was sent to a concentration camp.

I knew about Nazi's, concentration camps from high school. However, I was an absolute dunce in the presence of this gentleman. It wasn't until I travelled did I begin to understand and become aware of the impact of man's inhumanity to man. I wish I could go back in time and have the ability to be present to listen and hear about the unbelievable life this gentleman lived. I was too ignorant at the time to even recite the name of a camp, the resistance, DDay, etc. This is why I feel travel and visiting places is important. The experience and self reflection is powerful. I've been to Auschwitz and Dachau. I wish more people would visit these historical places to learn and open their minds.