Visitors in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum | EUROM
accident that makes a visitor to Kraków – instead
If you listen to some of the complaints or read
of going to the medieval salt mine in Wieliczka, to some of the highly judgmental articles, written
the monastery in Częstochowa or to Zakopane – easily and (far too) quickly, there is no one quite so
change their mind at the last moment, while looking annoying as young people and tourists. But these
through a cheap mass-produced guide at the hotel groups may constitute 90% of our visitors.
reception, and decide – maybe on an impulse – to Thomist philosophers like to repeat that if
come to Auschwitz. As if we had the right to judge something happens by accident, you should pay
such an impulse or even mock it. special attention to it. Therefore, I am not that
Young people, high school and university
interested in why people come here, whether
students, are treated in a rather similar way. Because they’re on a school trip or a tourist visit. I’m not
they are laughing as they get off their coach, because that interested in their attitudes or backgrounds.
they are talking loudly, because they didn’t go on Of course, ideally everyone should come to the
a trip somewhere else. Because they are taking Memorial Site well prepared, with proper knowledge
selfies, oh horrors! I remember a group of German and understanding of the topic, even perhaps with
local government officials who came to talk to me. some memory of it. But it is not what the person
At the end of their visit, one of them asked me: arriving here thinks that is crucial to me, but what
‘What are you going to do with this painful subject that person takes away with them when they leave.
of selfies?’ ‘Too bad you can’t see any more painful That is why it is so important to understand who
problems’, I thought to myself, a little unkindly. And they are. Attendance is not a question of annual
I said: ‘I will take care of it as soon as I see the first numbers: it means groups, divisions, minorities,
politician visiting the museum without a personal particularisms, sensitivities, exceptions. That’s the
photographer. It’s the same thing. Young people only way to try to understand it.
don’t have personal photographers, so they take
pictures themselves. That’s the culture...’
Deep VIEW
So who visits Memorial Sites? After all,
questions about the identity of visitors are
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