Bad Tourists
Tourists just can't behave! It is so frustrating and maddening to visit the location of the largest-scale genocide EVER, and find people being impossibly disrespectful.
What not to do at Auschwitz
- Take your little kids
- Let those kids play around the bunks in Birkenau
- Make out of the lawn in front of the punishment blocks
- Have a picnic on those lawns
- Pose for a picture holding on to the barbed wire (teenage boys)
- Pose for smiling group shots under the "arbeit macht frei" sign
- If you are a townsperson living in Auschwitz (and of course, anything starting like that is not going to end well) do not take your kids on a short cut through the camp when you are out biking to the village.
- Smoking
- Eat pork burgers
- Sell pork burgers (there were food stands)
- Sell OR buy posters showing the dead
- Buy or sell postcards
-If you are priest, offer a girl religious tracts, even after she tells you that she is Jewish!
Everyone there was SO disrespectful. They were Asian tour groups (with umbrellas and white-gloved hands and zillions of cameras) and Polish families out for free entertainment (no admission fee to the camps).
Auschwitz ia now called a 'museum'. Apparently 'death camp' is not tourist-friendly enough to draw in the crowds. I signed up for a tour, which started with an extremely graphic but not entirely acurate movie, and then a 3-hour tour of the camps. Things that the guid said included: "The Jews brought all of their things with them because they were deceived into thinking that they were going somewhere to resettle." As if they all had a choice and were stupid enought to be deceived. She also stressed that "Some Jews cooperated because they thought that if they were cruel to their own people they would be released early." The tour was NOT good. There was one other girl steaming on the tour and we soon abandoned the tour and went off by ourselves. She was livid and so was I. I know it was Shabbat, but with no Jews there it seemed like everyone was just gawking.
On the tour (and in Poland in general) there is a lot of the attitude that 'we suffered too and they made us do whatever we did'. NOBODY made the Pole kill Jews. They did that just fine before the Nazis showed up. I am leaving Poland none too soon. Krakow appears to be a fantastic city, but at 1 hour from Auschwitz I can't really enjoy it.
Tomorrow I go to Salzburg. The place I am supposed to stay closes before I arrive. What am I to do?!
(Behind me at the desk someone is 'booking Auschwitz for tomorrow morning'. How horrible does that sound?!)
What not to do at Auschwitz
- Take your little kids
- Let those kids play around the bunks in Birkenau
- Make out of the lawn in front of the punishment blocks
- Have a picnic on those lawns
- Pose for a picture holding on to the barbed wire (teenage boys)
- Pose for smiling group shots under the "arbeit macht frei" sign
- If you are a townsperson living in Auschwitz (and of course, anything starting like that is not going to end well) do not take your kids on a short cut through the camp when you are out biking to the village.
- Smoking
- Eat pork burgers
- Sell pork burgers (there were food stands)
- Sell OR buy posters showing the dead
- Buy or sell postcards
-If you are priest, offer a girl religious tracts, even after she tells you that she is Jewish!
Everyone there was SO disrespectful. They were Asian tour groups (with umbrellas and white-gloved hands and zillions of cameras) and Polish families out for free entertainment (no admission fee to the camps).
Auschwitz ia now called a 'museum'. Apparently 'death camp' is not tourist-friendly enough to draw in the crowds. I signed up for a tour, which started with an extremely graphic but not entirely acurate movie, and then a 3-hour tour of the camps. Things that the guid said included: "The Jews brought all of their things with them because they were deceived into thinking that they were going somewhere to resettle." As if they all had a choice and were stupid enought to be deceived. She also stressed that "Some Jews cooperated because they thought that if they were cruel to their own people they would be released early." The tour was NOT good. There was one other girl steaming on the tour and we soon abandoned the tour and went off by ourselves. She was livid and so was I. I know it was Shabbat, but with no Jews there it seemed like everyone was just gawking.
On the tour (and in Poland in general) there is a lot of the attitude that 'we suffered too and they made us do whatever we did'. NOBODY made the Pole kill Jews. They did that just fine before the Nazis showed up. I am leaving Poland none too soon. Krakow appears to be a fantastic city, but at 1 hour from Auschwitz I can't really enjoy it.
Tomorrow I go to Salzburg. The place I am supposed to stay closes before I arrive. What am I to do?!
(Behind me at the desk someone is 'booking Auschwitz for tomorrow morning'. How horrible does that sound?!)
posted by Melamondiale @ 2:25 PM
1 Comments:
At 11:39 PM,
Wendy said…
What a frustrating experience! I am not surprised with any of that. It certainly says something about the people there...but then again, is that a suprise either?
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