Concentration Camp Social Media Shoots Will Destroy Your Faith In Humanity

Living in Berlin means that Poland is right on my doorstep, and having visited many times, I decided it was finally time to pay my respects at Auschwitz.

What I didn’t know is that where some of the worst war crimes in history occurred, where a staggering number of peoples lives were taken during a state sanctioned genocide, and where hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children were tortured and murdered, would somehow be deemed an appropriate place to get some hot shots to pull in the likes.

What can be wrong in a person’s mind, to believe that Auschwitz, or any place of such tragic significance, is a content farm?

I have always held mixed feelings about visiting concentration camps. On the one hand, I think it’s extremely important to be actively aware of history, including the worst of it. Without knowledge and awareness, we’re more likely to repeat mistakes or sit by while atrocities occur. On the other hand, there’s something about visiting sites like Auschwitz, where people turn up in busses with cameras hanging around their necks that leaves a pretty sour taste in my mouth.

A few years ago, when I first moved to Germany, I visited Sachsenhausen, a former concentration camp about one hour north of Berlin. As it’s not one of the “most visited,” and was not an extermination camp, it pulls a smaller crowd than some of its more gruesome cousins.

As disgusting as that concept is in and of itself, it was one of the most morbid, moving, and sombre places I have ever stepped foot. Situated plainly in a town called Oranienburg, daily life continues in a disturbingly yet necessarily normal fashion around the camp, where one becomes painfully aware of the fact that everyone in this town would have known what was going on. 

Auschwitz is a completely different experience, and the crowds that pull in here are incomparably large and touristic. From the moment I stepped out of the car, the swathes of tour groups were overwhelming. I tried to look on the positive side of the equation – people are coming, people are paying witness, and they are taking photos to remember the horrors of what they’re seeing.

This idealism came crashing down when I arrived at the second main site, Birkenau. This is where the infamous train tracks leading through the field land at the gate reading “Arbeit macht Frei” (work will set you free).

Two women decided this recognisable scene was the ultimate position to do a little photo shoot. I can understand taking a photo, I can understand even wanting to be in that photo (kind of), but what is beyond comprehensible to me is posing. Literally laying down on the train tracks in various sexual poses while your friend takes pictures, lets you check them, and then reshoots because you’re not that happy with how you’re looking. 

I am not a confrontational person and generally avoid communicating in public spheres unless necessary. I was however, very close to yelling at these women. At one point I even walked closer to them with the intention of telling them how disgusting their behaviour was. I decided instead to leave it alone, and not cause any drama or ill-feeling in a place where I too was intending to pay respect.

I walked through Birkenau, saw the gas chambers that the Nazis blew up in an attempt to cover up what they’d been doing. I saw the houses where people lived, I saw the rooms where people died. And when I returned to the entrance, new sets of people were posing for their pictures, and I’m not even sure they’d seen much else of the site.

All you have to do is open Instagram, go to the location of one of these sites, and you’ll see. I don’t know what the solution is here, but I know that my faith in humanity was destroyed in more ways than one when visiting Auschwitz.

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