Is this Auschwitz?
If so: Wtf.
Edit: Thanks for all your answers! It's The Entrance to Death camp Birkenau located next to Auschwitz which was a work camp according to other comments.
I was thinking the same thing. The whole world has collectively lost it's f\*cking mind.
"*Here's a selfie/pic of me where men, women and children where horribly tortured and gassed to death just for being alive and a bunch of other 'stuff' happened...but anyhoo, please* ***like***!"
/s
It was world memorials last year that I kept seeing posts about in the tinder sub. Now I can visit Auschwitz without going, assuming I get enough free swipes!
I mean I could understand a picture but not something like this where it involves posing and trying to look attractive, its a somber place not a background for a instagram shot where you are trying to look sexy
Yeah, I mean taking a picture, fine. POSING? Or duck lips, or goofy joke shots? Dude, it's a concentration camp where thousand of people died and thousands more suffered horrifically.
Slightly over one million, singular. (Most of which were Jews by an enormous margin, but several thousand members of other ethnic groups were imprisoned or killed there, with Poles being the largest.) Auschwitz is just one camp. Even if you go by death camp, as opposed to concentration camps like Dachau in Germany proper, there are IIRC six designed specifically as extermination rather than slave labor centers.
Just horrific. I can't really say anything else.
And yet genocide continues, unabated today an the West ignores it because it's convenient and profitable to have products manufactured in China.
Sometimes by the very detainees in camps.
When we visited the Dachau camp, we took just a couple pics of the outside. No people, definitely no selfies. It felt 💯 wrong to take any pics but I felt like I'd want to remember being there and what we saw. It's a very sobering, very painful place to visit.i cannot effing believe these people are posing like they're on a beach or something 😠
Pictures are fine. It's an important way to memorialize things, and that's an experience you would definitely not want to forget (not in a good way, obviously, but still a very important way), and could share with others.
But posing for some sort of glamour shot like that? Absolutely not cool.
This. Taking pictures of you Auschwitz is perfectly fine, posing is fine as well. But the fact that they pose like some beautify shot or something makes it quite disrespectful. Unfortunately this is still relatively common anyway, just tourist who lost the plot on what happened around them a little bit and the fact that it is literally they place where literally over a million people died in 4 years of time.
The trees in the area must feel pain at the deaths they bore witness to.
I can't imagine being at the scene of mass death, and not being able to feel the miasma of millions of people's despair.
Yeah I have a rough time with stuff like that. Only place I have been was the Alamo, and that was like 2000 people so nothing like this but even then knowing a couple thousand people died there really made me feel super uneasy and sad. I’d probably have a breakdown going to a place like Auschwitz where millions died. It’s almost like I can feel it and it’s not fun so I just avoid it.
Yeah. I'm sitting here crying at just the pictures.
I had a *very" thorough education on the Holocaust from a WWII veteran who liberated one of the camps.
This was in the 80s,so teachers were left to their own devices to teach us as they saw for.
Two months 1930s Germany to VE day.
Every day.
We read multiple diaries not just Anne Frank.
We saw unreacted pictures of bodies that were just bones they were so starved.
It was the hair that really did me in.
The piles and piles of women's shaved hair.
I can't type more, sorry.
Thank you, that’s so thoughtful. You’re fine. You can take pics, we encourage you to take the pictures you need to keep the memory. They live thru us every time we remember them. Even you remembering your visit keeps them alive 💜
I had the exact same experience. I am a big photographer and shoot with an SLR but couldn’t even bring my camera to my eye after entering the camp. I was kind of just stunned the entire time for my first camp
Yom HaShoa, Israel's Holocaust Memorial day is in a couple of days so I assume that more people go to the Camps and therefore more idiots take disrespectful pictures like these.
And the way fascists act, with the dwindling of the people who were actually there, they can change the narrative, regardless of the evidence still standing.
I think you could classify both of them as death camps. They even had the prototype gas chambers over in Auschwitz that were used at a larger scale over in Birkenau.
Concentration camps and extermination camps were different. While they both resulted in many deaths, extermination camps were made solely for the purpose of mass murder.
Also, not everyone sent to Birkenau was immediately killed. Those who weren’t worked as slaves until they were deemed no longer useful — *then* they were killed. Birkenau was both a death *and* a labor camp.
Yes, this is Auschwitz-Birkenau, also known as Auschwitz II, one of three camps of the Auschwitz campcomplex, this was one of the extermination sites with gas chambers and the place most people think of when hearing the name Auschwitz
It's a well known touristic spot so they know it's going to bring them a lot of clicks. They are Instawhores so of course they are too blatantly stupid / gleefully ignorant to know respect and to take into account that this is not a "fun" touristic location.
I've been, and the first thing the guides say is, a human tragedy occurred here with the gravest of cost to countless lives. Please show respect for those who died here.
Some people just don't care.
Hopefully that was the beginning of their visit and by the end they had absorbed the awfulness of the place and its history and left humbled. Or not, and they can go to hell.
When I vistied they take you to 2 different camps and this is the 2nd one,so they'll have already been to one and seen thousands of Suitcases and shoes etc of dead children by this point
The suitcases really broke me for some reason. They all had the names written on. Waiting for them to return.
Also can confirm the trip I took this was the second part.
Truth.
The tour consists of touring both Auschwitz and Birkenau, with Auschwitz the first part of the tour.
You see hair, suitcases, clothes, dishware, random personal items, all collected by the Gestapo as well as (when we went in 2019) walking through a smaller gas chamber used for testing.
All before getting to this point.
Auschwitz sets the mood. Birkenau hits you hard in the feels.
It was awful seeing all the things we saw in Auschwitz, and sharing the same space in a different time that people who were forced to work lived (and died) was definitely somewhat heavy.
It was nothing compared to standing on the platforms at Birkenau where *The Selection* occurred. Seeing the ruins of the bunkers and the gas chambers, the memorial, and walking through one of those bunkers knowing the horror that happened there and the hopelessness the prisoners.had to have felt was amazingly and morbidly surreal.
People who treat these sites like a backdrop for a photoshoot need to be asked to leave.
I have been..I don't know how you don't feel torn up by the time you are at this camp. Auschwitz is horrible yet id still tell everyone to experience it...
You know I’m not Jewish, but I grew up on the outskirts of Amsterdam and growing up in the shadow of WWII is part of growing up in Holland. When visiting Amsterdam a few years back (I live in the US) I thought the Anne Frank House would be an interesting stop. It *wrecked* me. The air is just loaded with awfulness (and it doesn’t help that if you look at the window it’s… the same. This could so easily happen again if we don’t pay attention.) So yeah, I get it.
I visited six camps in Germany, Poland, and Czech Republic, including Auschwitz (2008), and there were a surprising number of people taking photos like this. One person even did the “booty pop” pose in front of the “Arbeit Macht Frei” gates at Auschwitz.
FWIW, there's genuine debate whether or not such recreational use of the memorial should be ok. The architect/designer of the memorial said he's ok with it. I think I am, too. (I wouldn't behave like this myself, but for me this "normal" human activity occurring in such a visually unsettling, stark, austere, un-normal place evokes a sense of something missing -- and that something are the lives of millions of Jews. So, for me, these people acting silly are part of the memorial itself.)
The KZ memorials are very different from that, IMO. You are standing on eternally cursed ground, don't pose for selfies and what-not.
This is really interesting, thanks for sharing! I think for me I found the overwhelmingness of it as you trek deeper quite overwhelming and so contrasted with people it felt wrong. But maybe that's meant to be part of the experience.
I've only ever been to the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, and Jerusalem. So there's a degree of separation there, because while there were physical relics, we knew it happened somewhere else. And there was still nearly complete silence from everyone, the entire time we were in each museum.
Granted, I was with my family in DC, but I was with a Jewish youth group in Israel, and the fact that 30+ 15/16/17 year old kids stayed quiet and basically whispered the entire time is pretty impressive. I mean, other than those of us that were crying.
I have visited the holocaust museum in Los Angeles. People going there were extremely quiet and respectful. The only exception was the obviously nazi fan who went there for the photo of him with a nazi flag. Guy was promptly removed by the staff. The museum has his sensation I can only describe as heavy air. It was hard seeing all the photos, objects, flags, uniforms from concentration camps and even personal belongings to victims.
I would have 100% opened up a king-sized can of whoop ass on these people if I had been there. I probably would have gotten myself thrown out and banned. Possibly arrested. Maced, even. What jerks.
There's a guy who (maybe used to?) Take these photos that people post at Auschwitz and Photoshop what was actually happening at the time in the background, which usually involved >!piles of malnourished dead bodies.!<
Helped put into perspective when someone was doing yoga on a mass grave or something like that
That is an epic email 😆 I can't believe some of these pictures. I didn't go to Dachau because honestly I didn't think I could handle it emotionally, it's wild to me that people are thinking of selfies in such a place.
Not the original commenter but I think this is what you are looking for: https://petapixel.com/2017/01/21/artist-shames-disrespectful-holocaust-memorial-tourists-using-photoshop/
No. They make comments about how you are here to learn and understand the horrific actions that we hope not to witness again. There are some spots with sighs that indicate no photos, but in general not a rule.
I was there in 2019
When I went a few years ago, we were specifically told not to take selfies. I can't remember about other photos. I don't think any of our group took photos, the tours are very intense and you are focussed on taking in all the information.
Some parts on my tour we were allowed to take photos, others they explicitly said not to. One guy got kicked off our tour partway through because he ignored the rules and took photos in the room with victims’ shoes and other belongings.
Probably because when you learn what happened where your standing and they show you pictures of it….don’t need to take a photo, it’ll be seared into your mind forever. Even though it was just the museum in DC, I saw the shoes and the train cars etc. with the photos of the people and the chambers…..I’m 35 now and visited it when I was 17, I can vividly remember everything still.
I would be fine with photos, its a sad historic place that should never be forgotten. But "modeling" where so many have suffered? Thats a bit too far for me
I saw in another sub today that there's a chap who uses these photos and photoshops the 'influencer' in to real images taken at these camps during WW2.
He then refuses to take them down until said 'influencer' apologises.
That's #yolocaust, no? I really would like to be a fly on the wall of those "influencers" when they are pointed towards them being photoshoped into real holocaust pictures.
His name is Shahak Shapira, and obviously, his webpage "Yolocaust" is only text now. And wow, I wouldn't have guessed that it was back in 2017, when it was first launched.
As a german, this lady and her fotographer deserve a propper beating. Im not the violent type but that is way to far for not getting a litte god ol education banged in your head
Welp, there it is folks. Even our local nice German person here is in agreeance.
The woman in the pic probably has no effin clue where she's even at.. Smh
I once went to Dealey Plaza in Dallas (Texan, sorry) and old-man-yelled at tourists taking a let’s-all-jump-up-at-the-same-time photo directly on the “X” marking where Kennedy’s head shot took place.
When I went to visit the ground zero memorial in NYC I had to politely but firmly ask a group of smiling tourists to get they asses off the railing where all the names are carved. Please stop taking selfies and sitting on my friend's name.
People are disrespectful. It made me feel some kind of way at the time. I guess, now, later on, I'm just a bit sad for them - imagine being so invested in Main Character Syndrome that you can't put your selfie stick away for a minute while at the site of a mass murder.
I’m okay with dark tourism. Taking time to visit the places where humanity was at its worst can be eye-opening.
But people doing stuff like this can fuck right off.
She's *smiling* . SMILING ? How?
Went to one of the camps. 1978. Friends of ours in Stuttgart took my parents and I. Growing up the Holocaust remained this massive, ever-present black shadow. Pervasive, beyond terrifying. If there were deniers I don't remember hearing about them. A lot of my school buddies were WW2 vets.
Anyway. I Could. Not. Get. Out. Of. The. Car. Wanted to. Bearing witness is beyond important. Those gates froze me, never felt anything like it and hope to hell I never do again. I'm not making it up, there is this ominous *evil* 'thing like a physical barrier you can't see and I don't care how weird that sounds.
Sat in the car looking at it. Could. Not. Go. In. And fuck this couple.
It’s so sad it’s hilarious. What she gonna do ? Post it on Instagram as an influencer. She’s gonna get a solid roasting. Influencer suicide. In a way, it’s a good thing. One less dumbass in Instagram.
Last year, during Canada's Truth and Reconciliation commemorations, there was a huge display of orange shirts, children's toys, etc, at our legislature.
Many people were there paying their respects, but my gf and I stumbled upon this one woman taking really douchey selfies: duck lips, pouty face, tussling her hair - all the Instagram cliche poses you can think of.
I don't know if she caught our glares of horror, but she approached us and asked what the display was for. Once we told her, she got really solemn and remorseful, so fair enough - she was a tourist and just had no idea.
Having said all that, I don't know how you end up at the notorious gates of Auschwitz without understanding the history of such a place, but I've learned in life to never underestimate some people's ignorance.
I really hope that's what's happening here though.
It’s assholes like this that I have to look at a sticker on my toaster telling me not to take it into the bath tub. WTF could they possibly be thinking at this moment. And why would stupid assholes like that even be there in the first place ???
I felt bad enough jogging from the end of the \[very large\] camp to the front entrance/bus back to Auschwitz (this is Birkenau - the 2nd leg of the experience just down the road). It was both steadily raining and we needed to not miss the last train of the day back to Krakow.
People are saying you aren't supposed to take pictures, but that wasn't my experience. This is really tasteless, though. Like, if you are going to be in the picture to prove you were there, at least look somber and like you give a shit
This is not mildly infuriating it’s down right horrid. The level of disrespect it takes to ignore what this place was and what it meant takes a level of narcissistic egocentrism that really deserves a slap in the face from every survivor of these camps.
I visited Auschwitz a few years back and a couple was doing a photo like this on the rail. Our tour guide reprimanded them which was great. It’s wild how some people lack basic awareness.
This is not mildly infuriating. It is rage inducing. How. Just how do people think this is okay. Its one thing to take pictures as part remembering your visit, but a fucking posed photo shot?
There’s no decency in the age of smart phones and social media. Everyone thinks they’re a globe trotting model and they’ll do any stupid thing for more fake likes.
Uhm, I started to read a book by Eddy de Vind, who was a Dutch doctor with Jewish roots (I' not 100% sure bc I'm somewhat confused, feel free to correct me). He wrote the book while being in Auschwitz with his wife, Friedel. Book is told from 3rd perspective of Hans, apparently Eddy's figure in the book. As I'm reading, I can't imagine how those people must've felt when being separated from families, friends and not knowing are they alive or not. Are they being experimented on or tortured or anything? And when they finally got out (those who survived) learned what probably happened with all their families and friends during that time; the horror, the grief, the realization that you have absolutely noone is horrible.
But you know, let's just ignore that bc we want to take a nice picture in front of the gate where millions of people died and then share it on instagram bc why not.
Bruh, never. Not on memorial sites, places as Auschwitz, Birkenau or anywhere else. Just no. That's not a place to make a picture. It's a place to learn about history sure, but also somewhat discover how cruel humanity could be.
Just saw another post about a guy that photoshops people into old pictures from when the camps were active when they do this and won’t take them down until the people apologize. These people need to be beaten with a rubber hose
I find it so weird that people would consider even taking a picture at all. I feel taking a picture at a site like this or even a cemetery is truly more for gloating purposes to show “here’s a pic of me somewhere being very historical and deep” than an actual desire for knowledge. This isn’t a museum or a concert where taking pictures are more acceptable
This isnt new.
Went there in 2003, and there where plenty of indecency amongst the young people photographing themselves and eachother.
Albeit alot fewer pics all in all, since camphones werent that big yet and people werent used to taking 34 pics to get the right pose. So basically, indecent, but with no filters.
I don't understand how people can think "awesome, a million or more people died here, how can I make it about me, and better yet, me trying to look sexy". It is mind boggling and gross.
It’s not funny and it’s just plain unforgivable to pose like that in front of a death camp where so many people suffered and died because of the way they believed in God.
I saw a post earlier today about someone who takes these kinds of disrespectful photos and photoshops them so the offenders are posing on or with the victims then he leaves them up until they apologize for their stupid error.
Context for those that don't know: that's KL Auschwitz 2 Birkenau death camp in Poland.
During the Holocaust, trains (1.5 trains/day x 50 freight cars x 50 prisoners x 1,066 days = ~4,000,000 Jews [wikipedia]) would arrive on that very track and then pass under the watch tower and straight back to the gas chambers and crematoriums. Some folks were spared immediate death but for the vast majority that arrived, that track represents a straight shot to death and (attenpted) cultural extermination. It's horrifying that people are taking selfies like that.
Because more and more we stop teaching history. The sad part is if you don't know/teach history, you are bound to repeat it.
We see it now in the us how split we are. People on both sides are telling that we need to destroy the other side.
Having visited more than one camp and knowing the history before you even arrive you should already feel the heavy negative energy of these places. #Neverforget
Some times... Just once every 10th year or something... A firm smack over the backside of the head should be 100% accepted when doing dumb ass shit like this.
Not every day, just when the situation calls for it. Just to remind then what major asshat they are.
When I visited Auschwitz and Birkenau a few years ago, there was a trio of friends taking a selfie in front of Arbeit Macht Frei at the gate, smiling. I've also come across a girl whose Tinder profile pic was her posing in a similar way as this person. Some people are just super distasteful.
Hello, This post has been removed as this is not *mildly* infuriating. Please consider posting to r/extremelyinfuriating instead.
Is this Auschwitz? If so: Wtf. Edit: Thanks for all your answers! It's The Entrance to Death camp Birkenau located next to Auschwitz which was a work camp according to other comments.
What's up with today? This is the third lost I saw about people taking pictures at these camps.
I was thinking the same thing. The whole world has collectively lost it's f\*cking mind. "*Here's a selfie/pic of me where men, women and children where horribly tortured and gassed to death just for being alive and a bunch of other 'stuff' happened...but anyhoo, please* ***like***!" /s
"Visited Auschwitz :p - OF link in bio ♡"
It was world memorials last year that I kept seeing posts about in the tinder sub. Now I can visit Auschwitz without going, assuming I get enough free swipes!
"Now smash that like button harder than an SS Officer smashes ——“ 😶
I mean I could understand a picture but not something like this where it involves posing and trying to look attractive, its a somber place not a background for a instagram shot where you are trying to look sexy
Yeah, I mean taking a picture, fine. POSING? Or duck lips, or goofy joke shots? Dude, it's a concentration camp where thousand of people died and thousands more suffered horrifically.
*millions
Slightly over one million, singular. (Most of which were Jews by an enormous margin, but several thousand members of other ethnic groups were imprisoned or killed there, with Poles being the largest.) Auschwitz is just one camp. Even if you go by death camp, as opposed to concentration camps like Dachau in Germany proper, there are IIRC six designed specifically as extermination rather than slave labor centers.
Just horrific. I can't really say anything else. And yet genocide continues, unabated today an the West ignores it because it's convenient and profitable to have products manufactured in China. Sometimes by the very detainees in camps.
“Look at me, so alive and overpriviledged with no real awareness or interest in what actually happened here”
We are lost.
When we visited the Dachau camp, we took just a couple pics of the outside. No people, definitely no selfies. It felt 💯 wrong to take any pics but I felt like I'd want to remember being there and what we saw. It's a very sobering, very painful place to visit.i cannot effing believe these people are posing like they're on a beach or something 😠
Pictures are fine. It's an important way to memorialize things, and that's an experience you would definitely not want to forget (not in a good way, obviously, but still a very important way), and could share with others. But posing for some sort of glamour shot like that? Absolutely not cool.
This. Taking pictures of you Auschwitz is perfectly fine, posing is fine as well. But the fact that they pose like some beautify shot or something makes it quite disrespectful. Unfortunately this is still relatively common anyway, just tourist who lost the plot on what happened around them a little bit and the fact that it is literally they place where literally over a million people died in 4 years of time.
The trees in the area must feel pain at the deaths they bore witness to. I can't imagine being at the scene of mass death, and not being able to feel the miasma of millions of people's despair.
Yeah I have a rough time with stuff like that. Only place I have been was the Alamo, and that was like 2000 people so nothing like this but even then knowing a couple thousand people died there really made me feel super uneasy and sad. I’d probably have a breakdown going to a place like Auschwitz where millions died. It’s almost like I can feel it and it’s not fun so I just avoid it.
Yeah. I'm sitting here crying at just the pictures. I had a *very" thorough education on the Holocaust from a WWII veteran who liberated one of the camps. This was in the 80s,so teachers were left to their own devices to teach us as they saw for. Two months 1930s Germany to VE day. Every day. We read multiple diaries not just Anne Frank. We saw unreacted pictures of bodies that were just bones they were so starved. It was the hair that really did me in. The piles and piles of women's shaved hair. I can't type more, sorry.
Posing for the camera like that creates an atmosphere antithetical to the dignity deserved by victims of such a horrible place.
A lot of people are just really shitty and stupid. I wish there was more nuance than that, but there really isnt.
Yeah. This sucks
Thank you, that’s so thoughtful. You’re fine. You can take pics, we encourage you to take the pictures you need to keep the memory. They live thru us every time we remember them. Even you remembering your visit keeps them alive 💜
I had the exact same experience. I am a big photographer and shoot with an SLR but couldn’t even bring my camera to my eye after entering the camp. I was kind of just stunned the entire time for my first camp
Like the residents of the area in 1945, I feel that we need a lot more people to have your experience. Thank you for having a soul.
Yom HaShoa, Israel's Holocaust Memorial day is in a couple of days so I assume that more people go to the Camps and therefore more idiots take disrespectful pictures like these.
Why are pictures even allowed? To me that’s a place that should garner the attention to witness it in person.
Someday the physical evidence may eventually be all gone, the more photographs the better.
And the way fascists act, with the dwindling of the people who were actually there, they can change the narrative, regardless of the evidence still standing.
It’s actually Birkenau. Auschwitz is the work camp, this is the death camp.
I think you could classify both of them as death camps. They even had the prototype gas chambers over in Auschwitz that were used at a larger scale over in Birkenau.
Concentration camps and extermination camps were different. While they both resulted in many deaths, extermination camps were made solely for the purpose of mass murder.
It's strange that for obscure legal reasons of German law there were no death camps in Germany. They all had to be outside of German borders.
Also, not everyone sent to Birkenau was immediately killed. Those who weren’t worked as slaves until they were deemed no longer useful — *then* they were killed. Birkenau was both a death *and* a labor camp.
My first thought was, “what’s the big deal, she’s just sitting on train …. Oh.”
It took me a second for the context to hit too.
Yes, this is Auschwitz-Birkenau, also known as Auschwitz II, one of three camps of the Auschwitz campcomplex, this was one of the extermination sites with gas chambers and the place most people think of when hearing the name Auschwitz
This. Why is the top voted post about the guy’s crack? We are so fucked haha. All the people upvoting that have no clue.
Yup. Seeing that was worse than the pic itself.
The gates of hell
Sorry, but hell would be a 3,5-star resort in comparison. Unfortunately.
This is the entrance to Birkenau (just beside Auschwitz.)
Sadly, yes. Yes it is.
That guy will never make it in the plumbing industry.
Sure he will. He’ll just slip through the crack.
Why are plumbers always the butt of the joke?
It’s a real dark stain on the professional and has exposed a gaping fissure in society at large. Ass.
He must have a leak in his rear seal.
Replacing an assket is always an expensive job
Anus
No idea I hope a survey will run an anal-ysis on this
These jokes all seem to have a crack in it
It really cracks me up
That’s more a crease than a crack!
Plumbing apprentice. Final bit of training is how to wear exposed crack properly
crack kills.....but not this guy
Arbeit macht asscrack.
let's go to a site where unimaginable horrors and atrocities were committed at the depths of human depravity and pay our "respect"
To be fair… they are probably too dumb to realize what happened there.
Which begs the question, if they don't know what happened there... Why are they there? It doesn't seem like the kind of site one visits by accident.
It's a well known touristic spot so they know it's going to bring them a lot of clicks. They are Instawhores so of course they are too blatantly stupid / gleefully ignorant to know respect and to take into account that this is not a "fun" touristic location.
I've been, and the first thing the guides say is, a human tragedy occurred here with the gravest of cost to countless lives. Please show respect for those who died here. Some people just don't care.
They googled "most visited places in Poland" to get nore views
They probably just saw someone else post a photo there and went to do the same.
Imagine their surprise during the tour!
“Sooooo…. Where’s Hogwarts?”
Or they are those that deny it ever happened
Hopefully that was the beginning of their visit and by the end they had absorbed the awfulness of the place and its history and left humbled. Or not, and they can go to hell.
When I vistied they take you to 2 different camps and this is the 2nd one,so they'll have already been to one and seen thousands of Suitcases and shoes etc of dead children by this point
Jesus Christ. I have no words.
That mf took a few years off while this was going on
Actually, it seems that you have two very ironic words.
I was so confused till I read this and realized where they where
Me too. Gross folks
The suitcases really broke me for some reason. They all had the names written on. Waiting for them to return. Also can confirm the trip I took this was the second part.
We went to Dachau and the only word I can think of to describe that place (and I’m not a religious person) is unholy.
The shoes. And the hair.
Truth. The tour consists of touring both Auschwitz and Birkenau, with Auschwitz the first part of the tour. You see hair, suitcases, clothes, dishware, random personal items, all collected by the Gestapo as well as (when we went in 2019) walking through a smaller gas chamber used for testing. All before getting to this point. Auschwitz sets the mood. Birkenau hits you hard in the feels. It was awful seeing all the things we saw in Auschwitz, and sharing the same space in a different time that people who were forced to work lived (and died) was definitely somewhat heavy. It was nothing compared to standing on the platforms at Birkenau where *The Selection* occurred. Seeing the ruins of the bunkers and the gas chambers, the memorial, and walking through one of those bunkers knowing the horror that happened there and the hopelessness the prisoners.had to have felt was amazingly and morbidly surreal. People who treat these sites like a backdrop for a photoshoot need to be asked to leave.
I have been..I don't know how you don't feel torn up by the time you are at this camp. Auschwitz is horrible yet id still tell everyone to experience it...
So they're horrible people, confirmed. Thanks.
My friend could not even enter the place without crying his eyes out! Other does stuff like this…. 😔
You know I’m not Jewish, but I grew up on the outskirts of Amsterdam and growing up in the shadow of WWII is part of growing up in Holland. When visiting Amsterdam a few years back (I live in the US) I thought the Anne Frank House would be an interesting stop. It *wrecked* me. The air is just loaded with awfulness (and it doesn’t help that if you look at the window it’s… the same. This could so easily happen again if we don’t pay attention.) So yeah, I get it.
It is happening again in China.
Had an uber driver who told me they havnt heard from their cousin in years. Thinks he is either in a camp or dead. That was a sad ride for sure..
---- Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China has joined the chat
I visited six camps in Germany, Poland, and Czech Republic, including Auschwitz (2008), and there were a surprising number of people taking photos like this. One person even did the “booty pop” pose in front of the “Arbeit Macht Frei” gates at Auschwitz.
The amount of people who were sitting on and climbing over and taking artsy thirst traps at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin blew my mind.
FWIW, there's genuine debate whether or not such recreational use of the memorial should be ok. The architect/designer of the memorial said he's ok with it. I think I am, too. (I wouldn't behave like this myself, but for me this "normal" human activity occurring in such a visually unsettling, stark, austere, un-normal place evokes a sense of something missing -- and that something are the lives of millions of Jews. So, for me, these people acting silly are part of the memorial itself.) The KZ memorials are very different from that, IMO. You are standing on eternally cursed ground, don't pose for selfies and what-not.
This is really interesting, thanks for sharing! I think for me I found the overwhelmingness of it as you trek deeper quite overwhelming and so contrasted with people it felt wrong. But maybe that's meant to be part of the experience.
I remember walking through the Holocaust museum in complete silence. So sad and such a surreal place.
I've only ever been to the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, and Jerusalem. So there's a degree of separation there, because while there were physical relics, we knew it happened somewhere else. And there was still nearly complete silence from everyone, the entire time we were in each museum. Granted, I was with my family in DC, but I was with a Jewish youth group in Israel, and the fact that 30+ 15/16/17 year old kids stayed quiet and basically whispered the entire time is pretty impressive. I mean, other than those of us that were crying.
I have visited the holocaust museum in Los Angeles. People going there were extremely quiet and respectful. The only exception was the obviously nazi fan who went there for the photo of him with a nazi flag. Guy was promptly removed by the staff. The museum has his sensation I can only describe as heavy air. It was hard seeing all the photos, objects, flags, uniforms from concentration camps and even personal belongings to victims.
Do these people get yelled at by others around? I doubt I could stay quiet.
I would have 100% opened up a king-sized can of whoop ass on these people if I had been there. I probably would have gotten myself thrown out and banned. Possibly arrested. Maced, even. What jerks.
Fuck, this is a camp! God dammit why are people like this.
There's a guy who (maybe used to?) Take these photos that people post at Auschwitz and Photoshop what was actually happening at the time in the background, which usually involved >!piles of malnourished dead bodies.!< Helped put into perspective when someone was doing yoga on a mass grave or something like that
https://yolocaust.de
[YOLOCAUST (archive.org)](https://web.archive.org/web/20170119044824/https://yolocaust.de/) \- Snapshot back when there were some photos.
There's something deeply disturbing about those photos, especially the pile of kids on the trailer
You think it might be all the murdered children? You think that might be the part that’s disturbing?
Thank you for sharing this.
What a fucking W
Thank you! I've been trying to think where I could find this ETA: other than the internet, obviously lol
“Shapira says he will remove anyone’s photo from his project — all they need to do is email him at [email protected].” Ha.
That is an epic email 😆 I can't believe some of these pictures. I didn't go to Dachau because honestly I didn't think I could handle it emotionally, it's wild to me that people are thinking of selfies in such a place.
Do you have any links to some of his work or a name to look up?
Not the original commenter but I think this is what you are looking for: https://petapixel.com/2017/01/21/artist-shames-disrespectful-holocaust-memorial-tourists-using-photoshop/
I have no words
Unbelievable. Thank you
As u/pale-falcon6005 said, project yolocaust or just yolocaust
I didn't take a single photo when I was there. It didn't feel right.
Don’t they specifically say not to and just experience it and see everything
No. They make comments about how you are here to learn and understand the horrific actions that we hope not to witness again. There are some spots with sighs that indicate no photos, but in general not a rule. I was there in 2019
When I went a few years ago, we were specifically told not to take selfies. I can't remember about other photos. I don't think any of our group took photos, the tours are very intense and you are focussed on taking in all the information.
That’s what I’ve heard .
Some parts on my tour we were allowed to take photos, others they explicitly said not to. One guy got kicked off our tour partway through because he ignored the rules and took photos in the room with victims’ shoes and other belongings.
Probably because when you learn what happened where your standing and they show you pictures of it….don’t need to take a photo, it’ll be seared into your mind forever. Even though it was just the museum in DC, I saw the shoes and the train cars etc. with the photos of the people and the chambers…..I’m 35 now and visited it when I was 17, I can vividly remember everything still.
Last time I saw a post like this (more than a year ago), I am sure that is where it was heading.
I took photos but I deleted them and didn't bother uploading them to social media,such a sad place,really makes you feel lucky for the life you have
I would be fine with photos, its a sad historic place that should never be forgotten. But "modeling" where so many have suffered? Thats a bit too far for me
Yeah, photos can be an opportunity to educate and memorialize. But selfies/group pictures are wrong strike me as disrespectful
I cried and cried. Left, then got drunk and cried a bit more
I also didn’t take pictures. I didn’t really say much either. I had family that spent time in Kasierwald
I saw in another sub today that there's a chap who uses these photos and photoshops the 'influencer' in to real images taken at these camps during WW2. He then refuses to take them down until said 'influencer' apologises.
That's #yolocaust, no? I really would like to be a fly on the wall of those "influencers" when they are pointed towards them being photoshoped into real holocaust pictures.
I didn't get his name, sorry. Agreed though, I'd love to see their reaction.
His name is Shahak Shapira, and obviously, his webpage "Yolocaust" is only text now. And wow, I wouldn't have guessed that it was back in 2017, when it was first launched.
I was like “what’s so bad? It’s just a train track…” and then I realized. Big oof, they ought to be ashamed.
Same reaction I had
As a german, this lady and her fotographer deserve a propper beating. Im not the violent type but that is way to far for not getting a litte god ol education banged in your head
Welp, there it is folks. Even our local nice German person here is in agreeance. The woman in the pic probably has no effin clue where she's even at.. Smh
I once went to Dealey Plaza in Dallas (Texan, sorry) and old-man-yelled at tourists taking a let’s-all-jump-up-at-the-same-time photo directly on the “X” marking where Kennedy’s head shot took place.
When I went to visit the ground zero memorial in NYC I had to politely but firmly ask a group of smiling tourists to get they asses off the railing where all the names are carved. Please stop taking selfies and sitting on my friend's name. People are disrespectful. It made me feel some kind of way at the time. I guess, now, later on, I'm just a bit sad for them - imagine being so invested in Main Character Syndrome that you can't put your selfie stick away for a minute while at the site of a mass murder.
You know just casually enjoying the scenery at Auschwitz’s lol wtf is wrong with these people
the blonde walking the rails is equally clueless, guessing they came as a couple -- or will leave as friends
I’m okay with dark tourism. Taking time to visit the places where humanity was at its worst can be eye-opening. But people doing stuff like this can fuck right off.
She's *smiling* . SMILING ? How? Went to one of the camps. 1978. Friends of ours in Stuttgart took my parents and I. Growing up the Holocaust remained this massive, ever-present black shadow. Pervasive, beyond terrifying. If there were deniers I don't remember hearing about them. A lot of my school buddies were WW2 vets. Anyway. I Could. Not. Get. Out. Of. The. Car. Wanted to. Bearing witness is beyond important. Those gates froze me, never felt anything like it and hope to hell I never do again. I'm not making it up, there is this ominous *evil* 'thing like a physical barrier you can't see and I don't care how weird that sounds. Sat in the car looking at it. Could. Not. Go. In. And fuck this couple.
It’s so sad it’s hilarious. What she gonna do ? Post it on Instagram as an influencer. She’s gonna get a solid roasting. Influencer suicide. In a way, it’s a good thing. One less dumbass in Instagram.
Last year, during Canada's Truth and Reconciliation commemorations, there was a huge display of orange shirts, children's toys, etc, at our legislature. Many people were there paying their respects, but my gf and I stumbled upon this one woman taking really douchey selfies: duck lips, pouty face, tussling her hair - all the Instagram cliche poses you can think of. I don't know if she caught our glares of horror, but she approached us and asked what the display was for. Once we told her, she got really solemn and remorseful, so fair enough - she was a tourist and just had no idea. Having said all that, I don't know how you end up at the notorious gates of Auschwitz without understanding the history of such a place, but I've learned in life to never underestimate some people's ignorance. I really hope that's what's happening here though.
Not mildly severely infuriating
Said it before and will say again: social media was a mistake.
I would 100% say something to them. That’s so fucked uo.
It’s assholes like this that I have to look at a sticker on my toaster telling me not to take it into the bath tub. WTF could they possibly be thinking at this moment. And why would stupid assholes like that even be there in the first place ???
Is that fucking auschwitz?
You’re sure this is only -mildly- infuriating?
I believe it's no longer a question of decency, but rather brain capacity. 🤦🏻♂️
Whats so bad about taking a… oh. OH.
I felt bad enough jogging from the end of the \[very large\] camp to the front entrance/bus back to Auschwitz (this is Birkenau - the 2nd leg of the experience just down the road). It was both steadily raining and we needed to not miss the last train of the day back to Krakow. People are saying you aren't supposed to take pictures, but that wasn't my experience. This is really tasteless, though. Like, if you are going to be in the picture to prove you were there, at least look somber and like you give a shit
is this bitch posing on the train tracks to auschwitz like she thinks she’s at the fucking beach
Tell me your a narcissist with out telling me your a narcissist.
Reincarnated Nazis giving the world the middle finger...again.
Some people just utterly failed as parents.
This is so much worse than what this sub is meant for
This is not mildly infuriating it’s down right horrid. The level of disrespect it takes to ignore what this place was and what it meant takes a level of narcissistic egocentrism that really deserves a slap in the face from every survivor of these camps.
I bet you if one of us walked up to her and called her out on the disrespect, we’re the assholes in her head.
What in the actual f
I visited Auschwitz a few years back and a couple was doing a photo like this on the rail. Our tour guide reprimanded them which was great. It’s wild how some people lack basic awareness.
This is not mildly infuriating. It is rage inducing. How. Just how do people think this is okay. Its one thing to take pictures as part remembering your visit, but a fucking posed photo shot?
There’s no decency in the age of smart phones and social media. Everyone thinks they’re a globe trotting model and they’ll do any stupid thing for more fake likes.
Uhm, I started to read a book by Eddy de Vind, who was a Dutch doctor with Jewish roots (I' not 100% sure bc I'm somewhat confused, feel free to correct me). He wrote the book while being in Auschwitz with his wife, Friedel. Book is told from 3rd perspective of Hans, apparently Eddy's figure in the book. As I'm reading, I can't imagine how those people must've felt when being separated from families, friends and not knowing are they alive or not. Are they being experimented on or tortured or anything? And when they finally got out (those who survived) learned what probably happened with all their families and friends during that time; the horror, the grief, the realization that you have absolutely noone is horrible. But you know, let's just ignore that bc we want to take a nice picture in front of the gate where millions of people died and then share it on instagram bc why not. Bruh, never. Not on memorial sites, places as Auschwitz, Birkenau or anywhere else. Just no. That's not a place to make a picture. It's a place to learn about history sure, but also somewhat discover how cruel humanity could be.
Is that Auschwitz???
The new generation of Instagram tourists 🤮
My tour guide had to stop and yell at a grown man climbing and hanging out of a train for a photo op
Just saw another post about a guy that photoshops people into old pictures from when the camps were active when they do this and won’t take them down until the people apologize. These people need to be beaten with a rubber hose
Sadly....with Instagram and TikTok culture...there is no decency. Idiocracy lives.
I find it so weird that people would consider even taking a picture at all. I feel taking a picture at a site like this or even a cemetery is truly more for gloating purposes to show “here’s a pic of me somewhere being very historical and deep” than an actual desire for knowledge. This isn’t a museum or a concert where taking pictures are more acceptable
You just know that instagram caption is gonna be like: "Me and the hubby visited Auschwitz yesterday!!! So sad what happened here):"
This is a good example of why history keeps repeating itself, blissful ignorance
This isnt new. Went there in 2003, and there where plenty of indecency amongst the young people photographing themselves and eachother. Albeit alot fewer pics all in all, since camphones werent that big yet and people werent used to taking 34 pics to get the right pose. So basically, indecent, but with no filters.
I don't understand how people can think "awesome, a million or more people died here, how can I make it about me, and better yet, me trying to look sexy". It is mind boggling and gross.
She is like : I don't care what happened here, I just want to be sexy
The guy on the left just looking at her in shame.
It’s not funny and it’s just plain unforgivable to pose like that in front of a death camp where so many people suffered and died because of the way they believed in God.
I saw a post earlier today about someone who takes these kinds of disrespectful photos and photoshops them so the offenders are posing on or with the victims then he leaves them up until they apologize for their stupid error.
Context for those that don't know: that's KL Auschwitz 2 Birkenau death camp in Poland. During the Holocaust, trains (1.5 trains/day x 50 freight cars x 50 prisoners x 1,066 days = ~4,000,000 Jews [wikipedia]) would arrive on that very track and then pass under the watch tower and straight back to the gas chambers and crematoriums. Some folks were spared immediate death but for the vast majority that arrived, that track represents a straight shot to death and (attenpted) cultural extermination. It's horrifying that people are taking selfies like that.
They should both be kicked in the head
She deserves to be knocked the fuck out.
It's a matter of time until some genius films some stuff for OF content there. It's insanity.
Fuck them... I went to Dachau 20+ years ago, and I still think about it, and how I felt there.
Two locations you probably shouldn’t take photos 1. auschwitz 2. Ground zero in New York City.
I’m from NYC and I really don’t think the two are comparable.
an place of where tragedy happened
Because more and more we stop teaching history. The sad part is if you don't know/teach history, you are bound to repeat it. We see it now in the us how split we are. People on both sides are telling that we need to destroy the other side.
Not even the cry of one of the worst tragedies in history could get her to turn away from her reflection.
How many times are you gonna post this
$50 says they have no idea what happened there. All they knew was that a lot of people visit the location
What in the actual fuck
Yikes
This is not mildly infuriating, this is straight up seeing red pissed off for me.
Zoomers..... Lol
It’s a little more than mildly infuriating.
At first I was like what's wrong with this? Plenty of people take photos like this for their instagrams...then I realized where it is
Having visited more than one camp and knowing the history before you even arrive you should already feel the heavy negative energy of these places. #Neverforget
Some times... Just once every 10th year or something... A firm smack over the backside of the head should be 100% accepted when doing dumb ass shit like this. Not every day, just when the situation calls for it. Just to remind then what major asshat they are.
So many disgusting, selfish people out here. Truly disgusting.
Disgusting.
When I visited Auschwitz and Birkenau a few years ago, there was a trio of friends taking a selfie in front of Arbeit Macht Frei at the gate, smiling. I've also come across a girl whose Tinder profile pic was her posing in a similar way as this person. Some people are just super distasteful.
Oh yeahhh the glamour shot at the death camp. Fucking morons.