Holocaust tourism

The Dark Camps of Genocide

Main track of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Permanent exhibit at Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum

The Holocaust tourism is a term used by the media in relation to round-trip travel to destinations connected with the extermination of Jews during the Holocaust in World War II, including visits to sites of Jewish martyrology such as former Nazi death camps and concentration camps turned into state museums. It belongs to a category of the so-called 'roots tourism' usually across parts of Central Europe, or more generally, the Western-style dark tourism to sites of death and disaster.

The term Holocaust, first used in the late 1950s, was derived from the Greek word holokauston meaning a completely burnt offering to God. It has come to symbolize the systematic extermination of approximately six million European Jews by Nazi Germany in occupied territories from 1933 to 1945. The term can also be applied to mean the estimated five to seven million non-Jewish victims who were murdered by the Nazis in the same time period.

The term 'dark tourism' was first coined in 1996. According to P.R. Stone, there is a dark tourism spectrum, which differentiates between the shades of the dark tourism:

The spectrum aids in identifying the intensity of both the framework of supply and the consumption. The darkest tourism is characterized by the following elements: education orientation, historic background, location authenticity in terms of relics (non-purposefulness), and limited tourism infrastructure. The objects of lightest tourism have mostly opposite features: entertainment orientation, commercial centralization, inauthenticity, commercial purposefulness, and higher level of tourism infrastructure. Professor William F.S. Miles stipulates that death and violent events – transmitted between generations through survivors and witnesses – are darker than other events. Miles also notes that the level of darkness of a tourist destination may partially depend on the family background of the prospective tourists.

Stone distinguishes seven dark suppliers, which create the dark tourism product and experience. The model of seven dark suppliers demonstrate dark tourism as multi-faceted phenomenon, with the extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau conceivably the darkest in terms of influence. The Dark Camps of Genocide are sites where genocide and violence were actually perpetrated. All such sites belong to this category. Auschwitz was the largest of the Nazi death camps in World War II, and is at the top of this list. Holocaust sites usually depend on government's sponsorship. Among the seven dark suppliers are also war sites and battlefields (Dark Conflict Sites), places of remembrances (Dark Shrines), cemeteries of famous people (Dark Resting Places), prisons and courthouses (Dark Dungeons), exhibits associated with death and suffering (Dark Exhibitions), and finally, the tourist sites which emphasize entertainment (Dark Fun Factories).