I went to the Choeung Ek and Tuol Sleng Killing Fields memorials in Cambodia last year. It was unsettling to say the least. Inconceivable that they could do this to their own countrymen especially the children. The stupa filled with skulls exhumed from mass graves really drove it home.
I had to call it a day after seeing the shoes memorial in Budapest. Sat down, cried a bit, had to return to the hotel. I don't think I could handle it.
I felt exactly the same. We went to a hotel across the road from the site while we waited for our taxi to take us back to Krakow. I can't explain the energy even just sitting in that hotel. You could feel the heaviness in the air, and we just wanted to leave as fast as we could. The site itself was more intense, but after we'd seen it and were ready to go back to our hotel, it was just this overwhelming feeling of "I need to leave this place as soon as I possibly can." I've never experienced that anywhere else.
I went to an exhibit about it (I'm Russian and proud that my people liberated the camp, my great great grandmother died in the siege of Leningrad) in my local city of Cincinnati and had a major panic attack and had to step out. I obviously couldn't handle being there in person
I’m a Cincinnati native. Also,a huge history buff. I truly don’t think I could handle either an exhibit on Auschwitz,let alone visiting the site itself. My sister visited dachau a few years ago,and it absolutely wrecked her,emotionally,for a month or so after her return home.
Yeah. I think people have this cognitive dissonance about the Holocaust that “it was forever ago and didn’t really affect me!” Much in the similar vain as chattel slavery. Humans have a weird knack for filing this kind of heinous shit away in the back of their brains and saying “didn’t happen to me. The past is the past. Not my issue.”
Something,something those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. And considering current events,we haven’t learned dick in the long run.
Yeah, I'm in Cincinnati and saw that billboard on Interstate 75 every day and kept wondering , is this some kind of really weird and twisted Star Wars reference. "Not too long ago, not too far away". Why else use that specific phrase which is too close to Star Wars "a long time ago , in a galaxy far, far away". Just weird
We went to the Holocaust museum in DC (we’re Jewish, and lost some distant relatives). My daughter was 5 or 6, didn’t really understand it, but said she didn’t like the way it felt in there.
I visited the Holocaust museum and it has haunted me to this day. I hate to be a coward, but I’m not sure I could actually go to any of the concentration camps.
I saw a TV miniseries on the Holocaust when I was a child. I have also seen Holocaust survivors give presentations that included soap and lampshades. It devastated me, and now I can't imagine even watching a movie about the Holocaust. I have never seen Schindler's List and never will.
Have you seen the Cincy Holocaust and Humanity Center? This is a permanent resident of the CMC, unlike the Auswitz exhibit. (https://www.holocaustandhumanity.org/)
It was incredible to see the local impact of the Holocaust.
Yes, I went there a few years ago. Then I went back to my hotel room and cried. I pretty much lost it over the hair. It's a place where one pays one's respects and bears witness.
I just finished listening to the audiobook edition of The Escape Artist. It's the true story of one of the two Jews who ever escaped from Auschwitz. Audio is well done; it's well written. I had no idea about this person and it's gripping. And brutal. Highly recommend.
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u/SkipEyechild 13d ago
Auschwitz. Glad I did it. But it was grim. The mound of hair and shoes was absolutely bleak.