NIOD Rewind Episode 40 - Early Postwar Tourism to Former Concentration Camps

How has American tourism to Nazi concentration camps influenced the ways in which people remember the Holocaust and Nazi atrocities? In this episode, Anne van Mourik (NIOD) sits down with Leonie Werle (Freie Universität Berlin) to explore this question. As early as 1948, American tourists started to visit German concentration camps, with magazines even promoting Germany as the land of ‘Bach and Belsen’. What did this early postwar tourism to the camps look like? Is it a form of dark tourism? Why were the camps often experienced as disappointing by American tourists? And why do people so often compare the Holocaust and concentration camps to present-day events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic or other crises? Credits image in logo: Visitors view a photomural of corpses piled on the ground in the newly liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at the "Lest We Forget" exhibition at the Library of Congress. Photographer: John MuellerDate: 1945 June 30