4 ms·

I was abhorred to see a teenage girl pouting for a selfie outside the gatehouse of the Birkenau concentration camp. Everyone else was ashen faced after an exha

I was abhorred to see a teenage girl pouting for a selfie outside the gatehouse of the Birkenau concentration camp. Everyone else was ashen faced after an exhausting day of horridness. I wondered about saying something but decided not to.

H8crilA 7y ago
"You like places where millions were murdered by starvation?" Especially if this was after she saw that huge pile of human hair they have in Auschwitz.
Theodores 7y ago
Easy to be shocked by this but some slack can be imaginably cut. I accidentally went to a concentration camp in the Czech Republic without knowing what I was letting myself in for. Sure the sign said 'concentration camp' but I was just cycling by and in need of an excuse to stop, so I took the turning and went in. I hadn't heard of this one before - it was the one the Nazis showed to the Red Cross to show that all was well when it was not. I wasn't quite teenage at the time, but definitely young and ignorant. My mistake was to offer to take a photo for some American tourists that were there. They seemed to be taking selfies so I just 'helpfully' offered to click the button for them whilst they 'smiled'. This was obviously insensitive, but I had just casually arrived at the place with no thought. Meanwhile the tourists I had tried to help had planned this visit for months (if not years) and they had lost their whole extended family in Theresenstadt and other places where 'Arbeit Macht Frei'. There is something iconic about ironwork that says that, an impulse to take a photo definitely exists. But it is all very different if you go there because 'this place looks interesting' rather than because you have thought it through. I learned as much from getting it wrong with offering to help someone with their camera as I did from seeing the bunk beds and barbed wire. I expect your teenage girl pouting learned a lot too.

H8crilA 7y ago

"You like places where millions were murdered by starvation?" Especially if this was after she saw that huge pile of human hair they have in Auschwitz.

Theodores 7y ago

Easy to be shocked by this but some slack can be imaginably cut. I accidentally went to a concentration camp in the Czech Republic without knowing what I was letting myself in for. Sure the sign said 'concentration camp' but I was just cycling by and in need of an excuse to stop, so I took the turning and went in. I hadn't heard of this one before - it was the one the Nazis showed to the Red Cross to show that all was well when it was not. I wasn't quite teenage at the time, but definitely young and ignorant. My mistake was to offer to take a photo for some American tourists that were there. They seemed to be taking selfies so I just 'helpfully' offered to click the button for them whilst they 'smiled'. This was obviously insensitive, but I had just casually arrived at the place with no thought. Meanwhile the tourists I had tried to help had planned this visit for months (if not years) and they had lost their whole extended family in Theresenstadt and other places where 'Arbeit Macht Frei'. There is something iconic about ironwork that says that, an impulse to take a photo definitely exists. But it is all very different if you go there because 'this place looks interesting' rather than because you have thought it through. I learned as much from getting it wrong with offering to help someone with their camera as I did from seeing the bunk beds and barbed wire. I expect your teenage girl pouting learned a lot too.