There’s nothing wrong with ‘Dark Tourism’, but it can be problematic if not treated with respect

Ever since David Farrier’s documentary series “Dark Tourist” aired on Netflix in 2018 the term has entered societies vocabulary.

Many of us have even partook in being dark tourists ourselves.

I live in Belfast, a city that’s become a bit of a tourist hub in the Post-Troubles era. Whilst a lot of this has been fuelled by Game of Thrones recently, the Titanic museum is also a huge attraction (spoiler alert if you haven’t seen the movie, it’s about a ship that sank, where 1,500+ drowned). Other big Tourist attractions in Belfast are related to the Troubles: peace walls separating the 2 communities at each side of the Troubles, murals dedicated to the paramilitary combatants and Black Taxi tours where the drivers pass on an oral history of the Troubles within Belfast, whilst taking you past paramilitary strongholds and sites of some of the atrocities.

The catacombs in Paris feature human remains that were relocated from overcrowded graveyards to an abandoned quarry and is one of the most better known tourist attractions within the French capital.

Pompeii is an example of a natural disaster becoming a tourist attraction.

Ground Zero; the site of 9/11 has also become a tourist attraction where on average 3 million people visit to pay their respects annually.

Part of what brings us to these places is a morbid fascination, a need to satisfy a curiosity about death, an eventuality for all of us.

A big aspect of Dark Tourism relates to Genocide tourism (for example: the killing fields in Cambodia, mass graves in Rwanda/Bosnia), I’ll be focusing mainly on Holocaust tourism though, as its what I’m most familiar with.

I have personally visited 3 concentration camps on different trips; Auschwitz, Stutthof and Thereseinstadt and have felt different emotions inside each (I will return to this later). And have mentioned keeping an eye out for Stolperstein before.

With increased tourist numbers visiting these places each year (Auschwitz experienced a record 2.15 million visitors in 2018). This increased number of visitors can have a negative effect on the purpose of opening former concentration camps to the public.

It wasn’t opened as a museum, it opened to instil a feeling of distress within you, to question how humanity could be capable of such atrocities, whilst reality has people taking selfies in front of gas chambers, and posing for photographs throughout. The photographs is something I noticed first hand myself, whilst we also witnessed a young child doing gymnastics. Quite frankly, if a child isn’t old enough to comprehend the gravity of a concentration camp, they should not be there – it isn’t Disneyland. Whilst Twitter user @letshugbro stumbled across graffiti relating to YouTuber Pewdiepie.

Whilst it should go beyond saying that you should travel with respect, attempting to leave the place you’ve visited as it was when you found it.

Whilst the arena in Verona below is not as famous as the Colosseum in Rome, it still is a popular tourist attraction in its’ own right.

In its’ prime within the Roman Empire, it was the site of gladiator fighting and public executions, and when I was there – I noticed someone’s attempt to gain some Instagram followers.

A similar shaming technique was employed by German artist Shahak Shapira who photoshopped disrespectful tourists from the memorial to the spots where they perished. The BBC article from his project can be found here. As I walked amongst the concrete columns I was reminded of his work. We visited Berlin at a cold time of year, so perhaps that played a factor in the lack of visitors, but at the same time there were still some people running through the memorial.

What personally brought me to the 3 concentration camps varies. I wanted to visit the most infamous of all the camps in Auschwitz, I read about Thereseinstadt being a propaganda front which when the Red Cross investigated – they left content that nothing sinister was happening within the concentration camps after viewing it, and we visited Stutthof to see how harrowing it is, despite being lesser known in comparison to Auschwitz or Dachau.

The oven in Stutthof still had burnt bones and ash remains on the floor. It was a disturbing sight.

The infamous gates of these camps were opened to the public to instil fear in us, to make us look back at history and think “never again”, to show us the atrocities humans can be capable of. Not to advertise Pewdiepie’s Youtube channel, not to promote your Instagram, and most certainly not to do cartwheels or take selfies inside the chambers.

I discussed dark tourism with my friend Maks, whom I travelled to Stutthof with, he inputted “I feel like these places shouldn’t be viewed as tourist attractions, but as places of remembrance.”

Dark tourism has eeked its’ way into regular tourism, and irregardless of your motivation to go to the various ‘Dark’ sites, it is vital that you remain respectful whilst there.