Based off Wordman’s comments in my previous thread. I’ve reconfigured my time machine to add a new location - the infamous Arbeit Matcht Frei gates of Auschwitz I at a random time in 1943-44. This time you’ll stay for one hour before returning to the present. There are no limits on where you want to go in that hour.
Again, you cannot change or interfere in any way. The device allows observation only; you can’t kill any Nazis or rescue anyone. Likewise, you yourself will not be in any physical danger. You’ll have to sign a disclaimer, but you can return to the present instantly by clapping your hands.
This time I won’t be charging penny one. The Auschwitz site today has seen a staggering 27 million visitors - 1.3 million annually. Is it something you’d want to see for historical purposes or to keep the memory alive? Or should nobody be allowed to see it?
I’d want to see it if I could. I look at pictures, watch documentaries, read accounts-- these are the horrific parts of history that can’t- and shouldn’t- be forgotten.
Certainly, on some level, there is some morbid curiosity-- but more so than that, I really have trouble accepting these things as REAL, despite knowing they are. Not quite sure how to verbalize this, but there is a mental disconnect for me, because things the like the Holocaust are so unimaginably horrible. I don’t know what I would feel or think actually faced with such a thing.
So yes, I’d go for one part morbid curiosity, two parts history nerd, and one part self exploration.
And not only should folks be allowed to see the atrocities of the Holocaust, but we should figure out some way to record what we see on those trips to share with the folks from the present who don’t go. It’s beyond “allowed”-- it should be mandatory viewing.
I wouldn’t go. I can see why others would, but I have no urge to. I can fully believe that humans are that evil and I know what I’d see would haunt me to my dying days.
Oh no, no, no. I’ve read enough, seen enough photographs, and heard enough stories about Auschwitz and other camps that I think I have a pretty accurate (and stomach-turningly vivid) image of what went on there. Two of my uncles were among the first US troops to arrive in Germany and they were haunted by the sights for the rest of their lives.
I would, however, like to buy a gift ticket for the Holocaust denier of your choice.
Most of my family had a one way ticket into Aushwitz. No thanks. I have no interest in visiting the site (I’ve been to Poland, in the vicinity). The Holocaust already destroyed or psychologically ruined most of my family, I don’t see the point of PAYING to enter its gates.
HOWEVER my grandmother escaped a forced march into the woods to shoot the prisoners, as the Russian front approached the camp. THAT I would like to see.
No interaction at all; you’re a fly-on-the-wall only.
For my own part I’d have to think long and hard about it. For someone living a sheltered existence in the 21st century seeing the nightmare horrors of that place in its prime first hand could scar someone for life. I’d have to steel myself, but I think in the end my inner historian would get the better of me.
I’d probably decline. I’d spend the whole trip either puking my guts out with grief or in a murderous rage, probably both. There are people who believe that kind of stuff is good for the soul, but I’m not one of them.
I’d pretty much have to go. I’ve seen Schindler’s List and read Anne Frank’s diary and looked at pictures of/read stories by Holocaust survivors, so I would know what to expect, abstractly. I think the difference (why I’d want to see it) is that all the media of the day was in black and white, which makes it feel less real. It’s hard to imagine how much difference it would be to see it in color, but I’m sure it would impact me a lot more. Depending on what I actually see, I might end up clapping out early (like if old handicapped person got dumped out of a wheelchair :(, or if someone actually died in front of me). But I could never forgive myself for passing up the opportunity to witness that.
I wonder if witnessing this might cause PTSD in some folks. Still, even knowing that’s a possibility, I couldn’t not go.
This OP does change things, to me, vs. the gladiator fight. There might be a morbid fascination with blood sport with the gladiators to wrestle with on some level, coupled with cool historical curiosity; with this one, I would be much more focused on the burden of witnessing and representing and dealing with the emotional burden of the events.
I found the visit to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., to be soul shaking; I can’t imagine what this would be like. But if it was possible to do what you describe, someone would have to go to bear witness and keep man’s capability for this level of atrocity fresh in our minds.
My natural inclination is not to want to go, because of the horror of it, and fear that it would haunt me forerver - but I think I would have to make myself go.
Yes, it very likely would. Witnessing the threat of grievous bodily injury to oneself or others is often a traumatic experience.
There is no way in hell I’d go. I have a hard enough time dealing with thoughts about the Holocaust. I don’t need to see it to know that it happened, and to understand the implications, and to have compassion for the victims.
Hmm. My reaction to the gladiator thread was “heck yeah, sign me up,” but I’m a lot less sure I’d want to go in this case. I’d like to say this is because there would be plenty of other things of interest in the Roman Colosseum that I wouldn’t get to see any other way … but honestly, I think there’s a pretty strong element of “historical atrocities seem a lot less real if they happened 2,000 years ago.”