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Auschwits - Birkenau – A dark tourism destination

Student work.

Despite the horrors attached to it, or maybe because of them, dark tourism makes up one of the biggest segments of the travel attractions market. Modern preoccupation with fictitious and nonfictional death appears to be a major factor behind the demand for dark tourism, in addition to human curiosity (Lacanienta et al, 2020).

From darkest to lightest, the graphic below illustrates the various facets of Dark Tourism. It illustrates the distinctions between the various hues, such as how brighter hues are typically intended for amusement, while deeper hues are typically intended for teaching. However, it should be remembered that a Dark Tourism destination's location is not fixed and is subject to alter over time. Although the categories are distinct from one another and have their own set of rules, a Dark Tourism site may also include a variety of hues, which could lead to conflict (Ferdinandus, 2022).

Source: The Dark side of Dark Tourism (Ferdinandus, 2022)

Nazi Germany's racial policies were founded on a particular theory that claimed the superiority of the Aryan race. This ideology provided justification for the eradication, sterilisation, segregation, and imprisonment of many racial groups, including as Jews, Roma, Slavs, and people of colour, who were viewed as "sub-human" and "race defilers". Despite the fact that this racist policy was implemented throughout Germany, concentration camps evolved as the most obvious institutional representations of racism and anti-outgroup sentiment.

Auschwitz Birkenau Museum    Source: Alina Jalba, EF Education First

It is significant to note that the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 explicitly defined who was deemed non-German, helping the Nazi state to designate out-groups more extensively. Citizens of the Reich could only be people of German descent. Removing someone's citizenship makes them an outsider, making it permissible to harass them. Not only were the people who would end up in concentration camps perceived as foreign prisoners of war, Jews, or Roma, but they were also widely seen as non-Germans and hence inferior ethnic groups.These out-group members were isolated, imprisoned, and dehumanised in the camps; their position provided as justification for their cruel treatment, enslavement, mutilation through medical experimentation, and execution. Concentration camps thus came to represent the pinnacle of state-sponsored institutionalised bigotry, racial hierarchy, and outgroup hostility (Homola et al, 2020).

Source: Auschwitz Birkenau museum

After being taken over by the Third Reich in 1939, the Polish city of Oświęcim was renamed Auschwitz(Halbertsma, 2018). Auschwitz has come to represent fear, genocide, and the Shoah on a global scale. In 1940, the German authorities established the Auschwitz Concentration Camp  (Konzentrationslager Auschwitz) on Polish territory that they had taken over and seized. Similar to previous concentration camps, Auschwitz was a state facility run by the SS and financed by the state treasury, which received revenue from the work that prisoners were contracted to do for private businesses.

Prisoners in Auschwitz       Source: Alina Jalba, EF Education First

As it carried out this role, Auschwitz also emerged as a crucial component in the mass murder of Jews throughout Europe starting in 1942. On a smaller scale, the Auschwitz Concentration Camp housed and murdered captives belonging to practically every European ethnic group. Auschwitz began as a solitary camp and continued to develop until it reached its maximum size in the summer of 1944, when it was made up of roughly 40 camps and housed 135,000 people.

Using the designation from November 1943 to November 1944, the two main camps were situated in Oświęcim (Auschwitz I-Stammlager) and Brzezinka (Auschwitz II-Birkenau). In addition to housing part of the detainees, the former of these also held the central warehouses, the commandant's office, the camp's primary administrative offices, and the first, or "old," crematorium and gas chamber, which were in use from the autumn of 1941 to the autumn of 1942( Auschwitz- Birkenau museum, n.d.).

Gas chamber and Crematorium, Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum Source: Alina Jalba, EF Education First

In June 1947, a Polish government bill established the State Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum. Part of the historic Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz and Auschwitz II-Birkenau are where it is situated.The bill was a response to an initiative by a group of survivors of Auschwitz, primarily former political prisoners from Poland.

It reflected the policies and ideologies of the Polish Communist State at the time, which included denouncing fascism and Nazi Germany, elevating the Soviet liberators of the camp, and highlighting the Polish nation's resistance and martyrdom. Therefore, the bill contained no mention of the Holocaust and instead claimed that the Museum was founded as "a memorial to the martyrs of the Polish nation and other nations." It should be emphasised that the 1947 bill's provisions are the reason the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex is currently the best preserved example of a Nazi concentration camp, even though the museum's mission and the meaning the bill placed on the former Nazi camp differ greatly from how it is understood today(Manikowska, 2020).

In addition to being a site of mass murder, Auschwitz is also a museum, a cemetery, a centre for Holocaust memory, an educational institution, a town in southwest Poland, a "must-see" destination for tourists, and a place where difficult moral and identity discussions take place. Despite all of these subtleties, the phrase itself has become widely used as a shorthand for the Holocaust or, more broadly yet, as an illustration of a simple moral choice.Thus, the word obscures a convoluted and challenging past, frequently serving as a linguistic and historical reduction that prioritises its symbolic currency over historical veracity(Pettitt, 2021).

‘’Arbeit Macht Frei’’ ("Work sets free" or  "Work makes one free") gate     Source:   www.Auschwitz.org

Tourists statistics

Over 1.67 million people visited the Memorial in 2023. Compared to the prior year, this represents an increase of more than 41%. This represents a slow return to the pre-pandemic situation.

Approximately ninety percent of visitors learned about Auschwitz's past via museum educators. More than 60% of them belonged to organised groupings. At the moment, 324 guides lead tours of the Memorial in 20 different languages (Bartyzel et al, 2023).

Source : Auschwitz Raport(2023)

Less than thirty percent of the guests were from Poland. The United States, Germany, Spain, Czechia, and the United Kingdom are among the other nations whose citizens have visited the museum. A pay-what-you-can option allowed some visitors to choose to financially support the Memorial's work; visit.auschwitz.org accounted for nearly two-thirds of bookings. More than 12% more individuals were going on study visits, which are longer visits combined with extra educational activities. Among the 21,400 competitors, foreigners made up more than half. During these visits, the International Centre for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust conducted over 930 different types of educational events. In this context, the public's systemic support for planning school field trips to the Memorial is especially important.

              An eight-minute introductory film, filmed by David Conover and made possible by the Lewis Family Foundation, was viewed by over 250,000 individuals before to the start of their travels. There are 16 languages in which the soundtrack is simultaneously available. American actor Mark Hamill provided the English version's voice as a gesture of support for the Museum. The Museum co-organizes numerous projects in different countries that offer opportunities for individuals to learn more about the history of Auschwitz. The largest of these is the "Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away" display, which received 180,000 views in 2023 (Bartyzel et al, 2023).

Social media

Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, an established memory institution with over 60 years of history uses social media to further its goals. The Museum launched its formal social media presence as one of the first Holocaust memorial organisations. Facebook profile from 2009 and Twitter profile from @AuschwitzMuseum in 2012. The Museum has also been active on Pinterest, Instagram, and Google Arts & Culture in recent years. As an additional way to further the Museum's goal, Paweł Sawicki, a former journalist and press  officer, started and has overseen its social media activities.

The Museum's social media initiatives and postings are making waves not only online but also in worldwide media, where they are frequently covered and discussed,regarded as an authoritative voice on the history of the Holocaust, its education, and the issues related to Holocaust denial.

              In 1979, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum underwent a significant paradigm shift when it was included to the UNESCO World Heritage List as a result of Polish government initiatives.With this designation, the Polish vision of Auschwitz—first and foremost, as a museum-memorial of Polish resistance and martyrdom—acquired a global significance(Manikowska, 2020).

Technological innovation

In June 2023 a novel multimedia tour, available in Polish Sign Language (PJM), Sign Language System (SJM), and International Sign Language (IS), has been developed to accommodate visitors with hearing difficulties during their trips to the Memorial. Live guided tours of the Memorial can now be scheduled online by people anywhere in the world. The undertaking"Auschwitz in Front of Your Eyes" was produced by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation, AppsFlyer, and DISKIN in collaboration with the Museum from December 2023(Bartyzel et al, 2023).

Cultural influence on tourism

Due to the marketing efforts of national tourism organisations like the Polish Tourist Organisation, which promotes the UNESCO-designated Auschwitz-Birkenau site alongside ghetto tours of Warsaw and Krakow, Holocaust heritage sites have become must-see attractions.

These sites have become more well-known as a result of a surge in Holocaust commercialization that started in the late 1990s when the Holocaust gained more attention in theatre, television, fiction, and non-fiction writing. Adolf Eichmann, Oskar Schindler, and Anne Frank are a few of the more identifiable cultural symbols of Holocaust victims that have come to rule these popular cultural contexts. The tourist destinations that have come to represent the Holocaust include Yad Vashem in Israel, Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, and, as a result of the Holocaust being exported from Europe, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC (Wight, 2020).

Wax figure of Anne Frank   Source: Madame Tussauds in Viena

The debut and critical praise of well-known films like Schindler's List (1993) and Roman Polanski's Academy Award–winning biographical drama The Pianist (2002) corresponded with the rise of "Schindler tours" and an increase in the number of visitors to the 1947-established Auschwitz-Birkenau Visitor Centre, which saw a record-breaking 2,053,000 visitors in 2016 (Auschwitz.org, 2017).

Schindler's List movie poster  Source: www.bing.com

Determining the boundaries of the tourist activity zones is made possible by the degree of tourism management and the analysis of visitor movement that follows. Four categories of tourist space zones—penetration, exploration, assimilation, and colonization—have been defined for the purposes of this study in accordance with Liszewski's tourist space idea. The administrative boundaries of the adjoining village of Brzezinka and the city of Auschwitz encompass the aforementioned zones. An investigation of the situation shows that the Auschwitz-Birkenau National Museum's boundaries contain the majority of the visitor penetration space. This museum emphasises Auschwitz's distinct status as a tourist destination in comparison to other Polish cities. Thus, the unique atmosphere of Auschwitz draws more than a million visitors annually. Simultaneously, the 800-year-old city's othe manmade features regrettably continue to be overshadowed by the former concentration camp(Ziernicka-Wojtaszek et al, 2013).

Due to the obscurity and darkness of the Auschwitz site, many "reluctant" tourists have chosen not to visit this specific location. In regard to the boundaries, social learning theories imply that travellers may have been impacted by a variety of news and feature articles that surface in the mass media that talk about death camps(Michelson et al, 2019). Today, Holocaust tourism is a significant industry, supported by an increase in low-cost flight connections connecting various local locations(Wight, 2020).

The influence of Auschwitz on Oświęcim

There are 43,000 people living in the small town of Oświęcim or Auschwitz. Situated beside the banks of the Sola River sits the settlement. Over the past century, Oświęcim has built a rich agricultural tradition. The chemical factory was taken back and given a new name after the war, and it remained one of the biggest employers in the region until production declined. But after the Soviet Union rebuilt the factory using supplies delivered from Germany, it started to employ most people in the town.

The Holocaust has been entirely forgotten. There is no memorial honouring the inmates who perished during the forced labour or during the marches to the factory, nor is there any reference to the fact that Himmler lured IG Farben to Auschwitz in order to take advantage of the abundance of slave labour. Oświęcim believed that the chemical plant held the key to the future. The plant, which employed 12,000 of the 55,000 residents of Oświęcim, grew to become one of Poland's largest makers of synthetic chemicals and was crucial to the development of the local economy. However, when the plant's output started to drop, Oświęcim was doomed to a fate common to most post-industrial villages. Many people in Oświęcim now commute from the town to cities like Kracow for work, while others work in the town's small companies or in agriculture.

The government is working on numerous projects to protect Oświęcim's local history. In 1996, the Oświęcim Cultural Centre was established with financial support from the Municipal Centre of Culture and the Chemical Plant in Auschwitz. The Cultural Centre hosts festivals, concerts, and activities for kids, teens, and adults. In 1998, Oświęcim's efforts to promote global peace led to the Secretary-General of the United Nations bestowing upon her the title of Messenger of Peace – Peace Advocate.

The local community established the Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp Victims Memorial Foundation in 1990. The organization's goal is to assist in maintaining, conserving, and preserving the structures, documentation, and archived materials of the former Auschwitz extermination camp. Monetary assistance collaborate with Polish and international groups and organisations that are devoted to fostering the memory of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp victims. One of the main groups devoted to keeping Auschwitz-Birkenau in the town is this foundation.

In Oświęcim, younger people and older people make up less than half of the population. Approximately 60% of the populace is working age. The town's demographics do not place as much attention on families, increasing the town's population, or youngsters. Clubs and organisations do not have a website link, but attempting to attract new clients and collaborating with foreign partners is emphasised. Youths in Oświęcim are subordinated to the labour force and the town's efforts to develop economically (Bracci,n.d).

Conclusions

Located in German-occupied Poland during World War II, the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp is one of the most powerful reminders of the atrocities of the Holocaust and the depths of human depravity. Here are a few examples of how it has greatly impacted humanity:

Symbol of Genocide : Auschwitz has come to represent the methodical murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust, as well as millions of other people, including Romani people, Poles, Soviet POWs, and others the Nazi regime judged undesirable. Its very word conjures the unspeakable loss and agony of that gloomy era in history.

Mass Murder and Brutality : Approximately 1.1 million people were industrially killed at Auschwitz, the largest Nazi concentration and extermination camp, mostly by gas chambers, forced labour, hunger, and illness. A sobering reminder of the depths of human evil is provided by the enormity of human suffering and the merciless effectiveness of its death apparatus.

Historical Documentation : The Holocaust's atrocities are documented historically through Auschwitz. The physical camp remains, written records, and the experiences of survivors all serve as important sources of information about the atrocities carried out by the Nazis, guaranteeing that future generations would never forget the truth of the Holocaust.

Site of Education and Memorial : Today, Auschwitz-Birkenau is used as a museum and memorial where people can learn about the Holocaust and pay respect to those who perished there. Its preservation as a memorial site emphasises how crucial it is to remember the horrors of the past and to bear witness to them in order to stop catastrophes like this one from happening in the future.

‘’Arbeit Macht Frei’’ ("Work sets free" or

 "Work makes one free") gate     Source:   www.Auschwitz.org

Source : Auschwitz Raport (2023)

Symbol of Genocide: Auschwitz has come to represent the methodical murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust, as well as millions of other people, including Romani people, Poles, Soviet POWs, and others the Nazi regime judged undesirable. Its very word conjures the unspeakable loss and agony of that gloomy era in history.

Site of Education and Memorial: Today, Auschwitz-Birkenau is used as a museum and memorial where people can learn about the Holocaust and pay respect to those who perished there. Its preservation as a memorial site emphasises how crucial it is to remember the horrors of the past and to bear witness to them in order to stop catastrophes like this one from happening in the future.

Impact on International Law and Human Rights: Following World War II, the horrors carried out at Auschwitz and other concentration camps greatly influenced the development of international law and human rights standards. The Nuremberg Trials, for example, laid the  foundation for the creation of international criminal law and human rights accords by establishing the legal principle that people can be held accountable for crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes.

As a powerful reminder of the negative effects of unbridled hatred, prejudice, and violence as well as the ongoing significance of justice, education, and remembrance in preserving human dignity and averting atrocities, Auschwitz has had a profound and multifaceted impact on humanity (OpenAI, 2023).

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• v.9(1); 2023 Jan

Dark tourism, the holocaust, and well-being: A systematic review

José magano.

a Research Center in Business and Economics (CICEE), Universidade Autónoma de Lisboa, Rua Sta. Marta 47, 5.° Andar, 1150-293 Lisboa, Portugal

José António Fraiz-Brea

b Department of Business Organization, Business Administration and Tourism School, University of Vigo, 32004 Ourense, Spain

Ângela Leite

c Center for Philosophical and Humanistic Studies, Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences, Portuguese Catholic University, Rua de Camões 60, 4710-362 Braga, Portugal

Associated Data

No data was used for the research described in the article.

Dark tourists experience negative and positive feelings in Holocaust places, suggesting emotional ambivalence. The research question of this study is, “is feeling well-being, as a consequence of dark tourism, a way of banalizing the horror?”. The purpose of this study is threefold: to provide an updated systematic literature review (SLR) of dark tourism associated with Holocaust sites and visitors' well-being; to structure the findings into categories that provide a comprehensive overview of the topics; and to identify which topics are not well covered, thus suggesting knowledge gaps. Records to be included should be retrievable articles in peer-reviewed academic journals, books, and book chapters, all focused on the SLR's aims and the research question; other types of publications were outrightly excluded. The search was performed in Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar databases with three keywords and combinations: “dark tourism”, “Holocaust”, and “well-being”. Methodological decisions were based on the Risk of Bias Assessment Tool for Nonrandomized Studies (RoBANS). This systematic review adheres to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. During the process, 144 documents were included, of which 126 were journal articles, 8 were books, and 10 were book chapters. The results point out a hierarchical structure with the main category (Dark tourism - Holocaust - Well-being) and three second-order categories (Dark tourism - Holocaust, Dark tourism - Well-being, and Holocaust - Well-being), from which different subcategories emerge: motivations for visiting places and guiding; ambivalent emotional experience that leads to the transformation of the self; and intergenerational trauma. The gaps identified were the trivialization of horror in Holocaust places; dark tourist profile; motivations and constraints behind visiting dark places; Holocaust survivors and their descendants' well-being; how dark tourism associated with the Holocaust positively or negatively impacts well-being. Major limitations included: lack of randomized allocation; lack of standard outcome definitions; and suboptimal comparison groups. Positive and negative impacts on the well-being of the Holocaust dark tourist were sought, as they are associated with the marketing and management, promotion, digital communication, guiding, or storytelling design of such locations.

1. Introduction

For a long time, places that have been the scene of wars, disasters, deaths, and atrocities have always fascinated people, motivating them to travel [ 1 , 2 ], giving rise to a type of tourism that has been addressed in different ways, namely, as negative sightseeing [ 3 ], black spots tourism [ 4 ], thanatourism [ 5 ], tragic tourism [ 6 ], atrocity tourism [ 7 , 8 ], morbid tourism [ 9 ], and dark tourism [ 10 ]. The term dark tourism , the most profusely used by the scientific community and the general public [ 11 ], was first introduced by Foley and Lennon [ 10 ], who refer to these phenomena as embracing “the presentation and consumption (by visitors) of real and commodified death and disaster sites” and the “commodification of anxiety and doubt” [ 12 ]. According to Stone [ 13 ], dark tourism is “an old concept in a new world”, and the novelty lies in the growing commodification of dark tourism sites; it “refers to visits, intentional or otherwise, to purposeful/non-purposeful sites which offer a presentation of death or suffering as the raison d'être” [ 13 ]. Dark tourism involves traveling to sites related to death, suffering and the macabre, a generally accepted definition [ 1 ], and disgrace [ 14 , 15 ]. Tarlow [ 16 ] suggests the phenomenon is complex by describing it as “visits to places where noteworthy historical tragedies or deaths have occurred that continue to impact our lives”, which raises the question about the inherent motives to consume dark tourism.

Stone's conception of dark tourism goes beyond its related attractions [ 14 ]. From his perspective, various well-visited tourist sites may become places of dark tourism due to their history associated with death – e.g., the Eiffel Tower (suicides), the pyramids of Egypt or the Valley of the Kings (tombs), the Cairo Museum (funeral art), the Taj Mahal (tomb), or Ground Zero (terrorist attacks) [ 17 ]. Ashworth and Isaac [ 18 ] also suggest that a tourist site has a higher or lower potential to be perceived as dark, evoking different experiences in different visitors (e.g., a site one visitor sees as “dark” may not be for another). Thus, the authors argue that no site is intrinsically, automatically, and universally “dark” as, although they may be labeled as dark, they are not always perceived as such by all visitors. According to Stone [ 14 ], the dark tourism offers fall within a spectrum whose intensity is positioned on a continuum between the darkest and the lightest, given the characteristics and perceptions of the dark tourism product. The offer ranked as the darkest in the dark tourism spectrum corresponds to sites where death, or another event involving suffering, occurred on a closer timescale. Those places hold greater symbolic meaning due to a stronger ideological and political influence, as they are evocative and focused on the conservation, preservation, and celebration of memory, and have serve pedagogical purposes. On the contrary, the lighter dark tourism attractions correspond to places that were originally conceived as tourist attractions, which explore the romanticized and commodified association or representation of death and suffering that occurred on an older temporal scale and, therefore, with a weaker emotional impact [ 14 ]. Light [ 19 ] posits that the existence of the “dark tourist” is questionable, in contrast to Seaton [ 5 ], who considers it central. Museums, memorials, cemeteries, prisons, battlefields, concentration camps, scenes of attacks and other tragedies, slums, and sites that intentionally recreate death and suffering can be considered places of dark tourism with different intensity levels of dark [ 14 ]. Whereas in some places there were, in reality, deaths and atrocities, other places are intentionally built to recreate dark events. Dale and Robinson [ 20 ] discussed the internationalization of the dark with the ‘Disneyization’ and ‘McDonaldization’ of dark tourism attractions. The growth in dark tourism demand [ 21 ] does not forget that death and suffering are increasingly transformed into a spectacle, largely due to the role played by the media and cultural industries, such as cinema, television, music, or literature [ 4 , 22 ]. Related exhibitions, museums, memorials, and television documentaries can be seen as edutainment; the “dead may be encountered for educational purposes” [ 22 ].

Dark tourism has become a field of interest and a subsequent debate, around the offer (supply) and demand sides, has focused on definitions and typologies, ethical issues, the political role of these sites, motivations, behaviors, and experiences of visitors, management, interpretation, and marketing [ 19 ]. Although some authors consider dark tourism as one of the oldest forms of tourism, it only gained popularity amongst academics from the 1990s onwards [ 23 ], confirmed by the growing amount of literature published ever since, which includes an increasing number of empirical studies on the reasons for visiting those sites [ 11 , 24 , 25 ], although still underdeveloped [ 13 ]. However, the understanding of the demand for this type of tourism remains an understudied area, poorly defined and theoretically fragile [ 23 , 24 , 26 , 27 ]. However, “a fresh academic wave, recently emerged, redefines dark tourism from the pilgrimage-based paradigm arguing that societies often elaborate shared discourses and narratives to placate the negative psychological effects of trauma” [ 28 ]. Biran and Hyde [ 29 ] moved beyond a discussion of classifications of dark tourism to the recognition of dark tourism as both an individual experience and a complex socio-cultural phenomenon, thus moving from a purely descriptive to an experiential and critical investigation of dark tourism.

Despite death being a part of the history of many dark tourism sites, it is not always the primary or explicitly recognized motivation behind a visit. Walter [ 22 ] states that most dark tourism is not specifically motivated, constituting only parallel visits inserted in a trip with a wider reach. The intentions to visit dark tourism sites could be related to dark tourism as an “anthropological attempt to domesticate death”, in contrast with the morbid nature of dark consumption [ 30 ]. Nevertheless, the literature suggests that tourists who visit dark sites are not a homogeneous group, and the factors inherent to the visitation are also not the same. Furthermore, the “darker” nature of the motivation can assume different levels of intensity. As such, in addition to the fascination and interest in death [ 5 , 18 , 31 ], the visit to this type of site is also motivated by personal, cultural, and psychological reasons [ 24 ]. Educational experience, the desire to learn and understand past events, and historical interest have been mentioned [ 19 , 26 , [32] , [33] , [34] ], as well as self-discovery [ 32 ], identity [ 26 ], memory, remembrance, celebration, nostalgia, empathy, contemplation, and homage [ 16 , 32 , 34 ], curiosity [ 32 – 35 ], the search for novelty, authenticity, and adventure [ 1 , 34 ], leisure [ 26 ], convenience when visiting other places [ 33 ], and also status, prestige, affirmation, and recognition that these visits provide [ 36 ]. To a lesser extent, the literature also mentions religious and pilgrimage reasons, feelings of guilt, search for social responsibility, or heritage experience. A death site is often viewed from the perspectives of religion and spirituality; dark tourists identify with the “belief, comfort, reflection, ethics, and awe on God and their relationships with other people”, allowing them to “understand the meaning of life, love, and living” [ 30 ]. Iliev [ 24 ] concludes that although tourists visit places related to death, they may not necessarily be considered dark tourists; as already acknowledged, those sites may not be experienced as “dark” by each visitor. It is, therefore, imperative that the so-called dark tourists are considered as such based on their experience. Some visitors may show a strong desire for an emotional experience and connection to their heritage, engaging, in the words of Slade [ 37 ], in a “profound heritage experience”; other visitors may be knowledge seekers, who are more interested in a knowledge-enriching experience [ 38 ] than an emotional one and look for gaining a deeper understanding. This latter perspective relates to eudemonic well-being, which takes place when one experiences meaning and self-fulfillment in life [ 39 ] and long-term life satisfaction and positive functioning [ 40 ].

Holocaust-related places attract many visitors and constitute a specific segment of dark tourism, referred to as Holocaust tourism by Griffiths [ 41 ], and are often seen as the darkest dark tourism [ 14 ]. For example, Tarlow [ 16 ] considered the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, a site that reached 2.2 million visitors in 2018 [ 42 ], as the pinnacle of European dark tourism. However, that site holds different meanings to people of different ethnicities and religious beliefs [ 26 ], which is reflected in the wide appeal of this site to a variety of people. All tourists to Auschwitz are usually seen as dark tourists [ 26 ], an approach that overlooks the possibility that the reasons for visiting and the experiences sought might be completely devoid of interest in death. In a study of visitors to Auschwitz, Biran et al. [ 26 ] reported that interest in death was the least common reason for visiting and that the main reasons were the desire to ‘see it to believe it’, learning and understanding, showing empathy for victims, and a desire for a connection with one's personal heritage [ 43 ]. Visitors to Holocaust-related sites may experience positive or negative impacts on their well-being [e.g., 44, 45], and positive and negative emotions may play a role as motivators behind visiting those sites [ 46 ]. A study by Magano et al. [ 47 ] found that people who visit more dark places and have more pronounced negative personality characteristics present higher values of tourist wellbeing.

Three main theories have been preponderant in studying the psychological well-being associated with dark tourism in the context of the Holocaust: i) Attention Restoration Theory (ART), ii) Stress Reduction Theory (SRT), and iii) Biophilia Hypothesis (BH). Attention Restoration Theory (ART) was used to elucidate the potential cognitive benefits of nature immersion. Ulrich's Stress Reduction Theory (SRT) focuses on restoration, which pertains to cognitive and behavioral functioning and physiological activity levels. Ulrich (1993) argues that humanity has historically spent most of its time in nature and that, despite modernization, humans have an inherent love of nature (i.e., biophilia). Consistent with this prominent theory, a systematic review by Shaffee and Shukor [ 48 ] established consistencies between research findings and the claims of the SRT. As with the previous theoretical frameworks, the Biophilia Hypothesis suggests nature immersion generates positive emotions.

A better understanding of the positive and negative impacts on the dark tourist's well-being could be helpful for the marketing and management of Holocaust memorial sites, as the promotion, digital communication, guiding, or storytelling design efforts could trigger visitors' interest and motivation for visiting the sites, thus increasing the number of visitors, and improving their satisfaction and well-being.

Is feeling well-being, as a consequence of dark tourism, a way of banalizing the horror? To answer our research question, we hypothesized that although dark tourism generates negative emotions, it also creates positive emotions that contribute to well-being.

The purpose of this study is threefold. Firstly, we intended to provide an updated SLR of dark tourism associated with Holocaust sites and visitors’ well-being. The second goal is to structure the findings into categories that provide a comprehensive overview of the topics. Lastly, the third goal is to identify which topics are not well covered, thus suggesting knowledge gaps.

The SLR includes contributions from 1985 to February 2022, namely, peer-review journals and books from reputable publishers. The paper includes a description of the applied methodology in Section 2 , followed by the presentation of findings in Section 3 , the analysis and discussion in Section 4 , and the concluding aspects, including a summary of gaps and possible approaches for future research.

2.1. Systematic literature review

A literature review is a fundamental component of any research study. It can generally be described as a systematic way of collecting and synthesizing previous research [ 49 ]; a systematic literature review can be seen as a research method and process for identifying and critically analyzing relevant research, as well as for collecting and processing the respective data [ 50 , 51 ]. Literature reviews “play an important role as a foundation for all types of research”; a systematic literature review could “serve as the grounds for future research and theory” [ 51 ]. An SLR is specifically helpful in pinpointing and assessing arising tendencies within multi/inter-disciplinary research, and it is more suitable for framing and synthesizing a considerable volume of literature [ 52 ]. From the relevant literature assessment and analysis, possible research gaps may be identified [ 49 ].

The “Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses” (PRISMA) presents guidelines that allow for a “more transparent, complete, and accurate reporting of systematic reviews” in a way that the methods and results of the systematic reviews should provide enough “detail to allow users to assess the trustworthiness and applicability of the review findings” [ 53 ]. The PRISMA statement consists of a checklist of 27 items and a flow diagram made up of four phases (Identification, Screening, Eligibility, and Inclusion); it aims to help authors improve the reporting of systematic reviews and meta-analyses [ 54 ].

2.2. Eligibility criteria

This systematic review adheres to the PRISMA guidelines [ 54 ], consisting of the mapping, analysis, and synthesis of the existing literature on Holocaust-related dark tourism and well-being. The criteria for the literature selection included articles in peer-reviewed academic journals, books, and book chapters written in English, published from 1985 to February 2022. The inclusion of records was not restricted based on when or where studies were developed; records that did not meet the inclusion criteria ( Table 1 ) were outrightly excluded. Methodological decisions were based on the Risk of Bias Assessment Tool for Nonrandomized Studies (RoBANS) [ 55 ]. The seven domains of bias addressed in the ROBINS-I assessment tool are: Confounding (selection bias, allocation bias, case-mix bias, channeling bias); Selection bias (inception bias, lead-time bias, immortal time bias); Bias in measurement classification of interventions (misclassification bias, information bias, recall bias, measurement bias, observer bias); Bias due to deviations from intended interventions (related terms: performance bias, time-varying confounding); Bias due to missing data (attrition bias, selection bias); Bias in the measurement of outcomes (detection bias, recall bias, information bias, misclassification bias, observer bias, measurement bias); and Bias in the selection of the reported result (outcome reporting bias, analysis reporting bias). Studies identified as meeting inclusion criteria were graded using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) approach, generating a quality rating for each article [ 56 ] the components of which are: problem; values and preferences; quality of the evidence; benefits and harms and burden; resource implications; equity; acceptability; and feasibility.

Inclusion criteria.

The primary objective of this review was to provide an updated SLR of dark tourism associated with Holocaust sites and visitors’ well-being. The studies had to include at least two of the following three aspects: i) dark tourism, ii) the Holocaust, and iii) well-being.

Dark tourism was defined as visits or traveling, intentional or otherwise, to locations related to death, suffering, the macabre, and disgrace [ 1 , [13] , [14] , [15] ]. Holocaust tourism includes the description of sites related to World War II and the atrocities perpetrated against Jewish and other people. Well-being is defined as the emotional, psychological, and cognitive aspects of a person's life [ 57 ].

2.3. Information sources and search strategy

Carrying out the Identification stage of the PRISMA process, literature was identified by searching within the following databases: Web of Science (WoS), Scopus, and Google Scholar. The searches were carried out by two researchers (JM and AL) who carried out the tasks independently. Three keywords were used in the search: “dark tourism”, “Holocaust”, and “well-being” (and the derivative “wellbeing”). Firstly, the researchers searched for the keywords together on Google Scholar's website, using the query string “dark tourism” and “Holocaust” and “wellbeing”/“well-being”, yielding 536 records. The same procedure was repeated on the scholarly database platforms of WoS and Scopus, searching abstracts, titles, and keywords, resulting in only one record from each database. For this reason, subsequent searches in WoS and Scopus databases combined any two of the referred three keywords. Keyword combinations are provided in Table 2 .

Database search queries (key word combinations used).

2.4. Study selection

Search results were downloaded and to increase consistency and confirmation, each researcher, using a complete list, removed any duplicates. The resulting lists were compared and consolidated into one main list. Ordered alphabetically, the list of articles was divided into two sets (A-K and L-Z). Two researchers (JM and AL) independently and thoroughly scanned the records by title, abstract and full text to avoid personal bias while ensuring consistency with the review objectives. The motives for exclusion of records at the full-text screening stage were in accordance with the GRADE framework. At the full-text level, article eligibility was decided collaboratively. A database of information, based on the data extracted from each article, included type of record, language, authors, title, abstract, keywords, number of citations, year, URL, and DOI (if available).

As a result, a total of 766 records were identified. Duplicates were flagged by comparing DOI identifiers and document titles. Each potential duplicate was manually compared, removed, and merged when necessary. As a result, 113 duplicate records were removed. The Identification phase resulted in the screening of 653 records. Then, 21 non-English documents identified were removed. The remaining documents were re-checked for isolating and all publications other than peer-reviewed academic articles, books, and book chapters (e.g., conference papers/proceedings, book reviews, editorial notes, reports, bibliography lists, no full-text publications, and theses) were excluded to ensure a consistent standard for analysis; 495 documents were considered for retrieval, of which 34 were not retrieved. Consequently, the eligibility of 461 retrieved records was assessed. After discussion and resolution of eventual discrepancies between the researchers, by consensus, 189 publications were considered eligible. The subsequent step of full-text reading led to the exclusion of another 68 documents, although they would have been useful to contextualize the review (these records are referred to in the Introduction section). The last step allowed the inclusion of 23 articles identified after the record references had been cross-checked. Finally, 144 records were included (each cited) in the review for subsequent classification and analysis ( Table 3 ). Fig. 1 depicts the PRISMA flowchart of the process carried out to identify the studies to be included in narrative synthesis.

Included publications.

Flow diagram of data identification, screening, eligibility, and inclusion process.

2.5. Study risk of bias assessment

This primary aim of the review was to determine the psychological impact on participants who visit Holocaust dark tourism sites from quantitative and qualitative studies. Secondary outcomes include other measures indirectly related to psychological well-being (depression, anxiety, positive and negative emotions) included in the studies. Quality was assessed using the GRADE system that provides a quality rating for each article [ 56 ] concerning consistency, precision, publication bias, risk of bias, and directedness. Of the 144 eligible studies ( Table 4 ), we assessed 59.72% (86 of 144) as weak (high risk of bias), 21.53% (31 of 144) as moderate (moderate risk of bias) and 18.75% (27 of 144) as strong (low risk of bias). Only six studies did not fall under any category and scored 3 (high risk of bias).

Studies by type of outcome.

Note. Multiple types of outcomes were found within individual studies. Categories were measured once within each study. Well-being included subjective self-report measures based on positive and negative affect, and mood. Dark Tourism included the description of the dark places where the study took place. Holocaust included the description of the places associated with World War II.

3.1. Descriptive statistics

3.1.1. year wise publications.

Fig. 2 depicts the publications spanning from 1988 to 2021, revealing a clear increase in recent years. About 77% of the publications included in the SLR were published in the last ten years, whereas 51% were published in the last five years, which signals the growing interest of researchers in the fields of dark tourism, the Holocaust, and well-being.

Distribution of included publications in the period 1988–2021.

3.1.2. Contributions from journals

The articles included in the SLR were published in 76 journals, 14 of which published more than one article, as seen in Fig. 3 . The journals Tourism Management (10), Current Issues in Tourism (9), and Journal of Heritage Tourism and Annals of Tourism Research (8) made the top-4 publishing journals, as nine journals were predominantly in the field of tourism, travel, and the Holocaust.

–Number of publications by journal. Note. The chart in the figure only includes journals (14) with more than one article.

3.2. Categorization

To answer our research question, we hypothesized that although dark tourism generates negative emotions, it also creates positive emotions that contribute to well-being. As such, we carried out our SLR to summarize the link between dark tourism, the Holocaust, and well-being.

The results of the systematic literature review carried out globally point out a hierarchical structure of the following categories identified: the main category (Dark tourism - Holocaust - Well-being) and three second-order categories (Dark tourism - Holocaust, Dark tourism - Well-being, and Holocaust - Well-being). Furthermore, from these three second-order categories, different subcategories emerge that represent the most discussed topics in the respective second-order categories ( Fig. 4 ). Therefore, we will analyze the main category and each second-order category separately.

SLR results: categories and sub-categories.

Regarding the second-order category “Dark tourism – Holocaust”, the sub-themes that deserve more attention from the authors are the motivations behind visiting such places and guiding. Concerning the second-order category “Dark tourism - Well-being”, the emphasis is on the ambivalent emotional experience that leads to the transformation of the self. Regarding the second-order category “Holocaust - Well-being”, the populations studied are mainly Holocaust survivors and their descendants, pointing toward intergenerational trauma.

3.2.1. Main category: dark tourism - holocaust - well-being

The main category resulting from this literature review is “Dark Tourism - Holocaust - Well-being”. Two major themes emerge from it: dark motives, dark places [ 82 ], dark tourism intensity [ 81 ], and another one related to the impact on well-being (negative and positive). Concerning dark motives [ 61 ], dark fascination [ 69 ], nostalgia [ 16 ], thanatourism [ 67 ], and the existence of the dark tourist [ 121 ] stand out, whose characteristics (possibly psychopathological) bring the tourist/person closer to this type of tourism. Dark tourism occurs in dark places (places alluding to the Holocaust), which are places of self-identity and self-reflection [ 82 ] but are also dark attractions in a continuum of intensity that promotes action (lighter dark tourism) or meaning (darker dark tourism) [ 81 ]. Moreover, this dark experience negatively impacts well-being, highlighting depersonalization [ 83 ] and moral panic [ 82 ]. However, it still also has positive consequences on well-being, especially recovery [ 186 ] and reconciliation [ 65 ]. Those positive consequences allow us to view dark tourism as being positive in its educational [ 2 , 80 ], cultural [ 15 , 62 , 80 ], and spiritual aspects [ 44 , 80 , 85 , 130 , 141 ], constituting tourism of reconciliation [ 65 ], episodic and hedonic [ 80 ] ( Fig. 5 ).

Main category: Dark tourism – Holocaust – Well-being.

3.2.2. Second-order categories

3.2.2.1. dark tourism – holocaust.

In this second-order category, “Dark tourism – Holocaust”, the different types of tourism according to intensity (lighter/darker) [ 14 , 187 ] stand out. It is also worth noting the different nomenclature used to refer to dark tourism (Holocaust tourism [ 19 ], difficult heritage tourism [ 94 ]), as well as the characterization of the dark tourist [ 7 , 26 , 117 , 121 ]. In relation to the Holocaust, its memory is preserved in places (or non-sites of memory) [ 114 ] and tourists appropriate this memory not only emotionally but also cognitively. Moreover, the literature highlights the controversy concerning taking photographs/selfies [ 91 , 110 , 115 ] in these places, either considering this practice disrespectful and inappropriate [ 115 ], or an active production of historical knowledge [ 110 ]. As a whole, this second-order category presents motivations, constraints, guiding, and Jewish dark tourism as subcategories. There is abundant literature on the motivations that lead people to visit Holocaust-related places [ 8 , 34 , 35 , 142 ], and some literature on the motivations for preserving those places [e.g., 104]. While the former is very different from the latter, from curiosity to the search for meaning, looking at the specific characteristics of dark tourists, the motivations for preserving this heritage are reduced to guilt, respect for victims, and economic benefits (Petrevska et al., 2018). With regards to the constraints suggested by the literature for not visiting these places (much fewer constraints than motivations), incuriousness and escapism stand out [ 83 , 118 ].

One of the subcategories of this second-order category is guiding, which analyzes the instruments available for contact between the visitor and the places. Essentially, the authors refer to the four realms of the experience model (entertainment, education, esthetic, and escapist) [ 106 ], theming [ 102 ], and interpretational tools [ 93 , 187 ]. Furthermore, the literature also discusses the roles of communication and information technologies in this activity. However, the binary paradox seems more salient in this subcategory [ 41 ], occurring in these Holocaust places, which often constitute repositories of artifacts in contrast with a history of absence [ 89 ].

Guiding is an activity that can lead to secondary trauma; educators [ 112 ] and guiding people [ 98 ], as well as Israeli soldiers (witnesses in uniform [ 86 ]) visiting sites of the Holocaust, can suffer from this secondary trauma. Dark tourism carried out by Jewish people often has a transformative effect [ 109 ], despite the negative emotional impact it can have on these dark tourists [ 87 , 107 , 108 ] ( Fig. 6 ).

Second-order category: Dark tourism – Holocaust.

3.2.2.2. Dark tourism – well-being

From the articles selected to be included in the first category of secondary dimension, Dark tourism - Well-being, two subcategories emerged. On the one hand, dark tourism and, on the other hand, well-being. With regards to dark tourism, two themes were found, namely: characterization of dark tourism as a type of transformational tourism [ 138 ] and the ambivalent emotional experience [ 85 ] translated by expressions such as: “emotional souvenirs process” [ 122 ], “emotionally laden” [ 131 ], and “emodiversity” [ 140 ]. Concerning the second subcategory, Well-being stems from the ambivalent emotional experience of dark tourism as a driver of the transformation of the self [ 133 ], as well as the “embodiment” [ 139 ] that allows the relationship between feelings and the body ( Fig. 7 ).

Second-order category: Dark tourism – Well-being.

3.2.2.3. Holocaust – well-being

From the articles selected to be included in the second category of secondary dimension, Holocaust and Well-being, two themes stand out: Holocaust survivors and Holocaust survivors' descendants and their well-being. While the literature presents the Holocaust survivors’ well-being as being both positively and negatively impacted, the descendants of Holocaust survivors only show negative impact on well-being. The negative impact on the well-being of Holocaust survivors is consistent with the survivor-specific effect hypothesis [ 154 ], marked by loss and lack [ 143 , 163 , 167 ]. This impact manifests itself through cognitive deterioration [ 184 ], worse quality of life, worse health perception [ 174 ], and mood changes [ 143 , 173 ]. However, these survivors also show well-being, despite the Holocaust, through proactive and cognitive adaptation [ 160 ] and socio-emotional selectivity [ 165 ]. In turn, the descendants of Holocaust survivors seem to receive intergenerationally [ 158 ], secondary [ 150 , 168 ] and sequential trauma [ 169 ]; above all, the negative impact on well-being following a conspiracy of silence [ 151 ] ( Fig. 8 ).

Second-order category: Holocaust – Well-being.

4. Discussion

Most people have never heard the term dark tourism, also known as “difficult heritage tourism” and “Holocaust tourism” [ 94 ]. However, they may have been to dark tourist sites where they fulfill their curiosity and have an authentic experience that is communicated by interpreting the place and context [ 101 ]. Also, these transitory spaces may act as important moments in dark tourism experience [ 36 ]. The dark tourism spectrum in dark tourism sites is a continuum of less dark to most dark [ 14 ]; according to Stone [ 14 ], the darkest tourist sites have a history-centric educational orientation and locational authenticity; the ‘lightest’ sites ‘dark fun factories’ are places where “death and suffering are the backdrop for tourism sites with a strong entertainment component” [ 187 ]. In fact, “it is difficult to interpret these impulses as more than the simple gratification of curiosity or (…) a more profound metaphysical gloss on it, for the purposes of considering their own mortality. Dark tourism has always existed in some form or other. What did not exist was the term itself [ 188 ]. Richardson [ 112 ], through the lens of ‘emotional labor’, studied how educators manage their emotions in situ, finding a “complex interplay of emotion work and self-preservation that results in educators variously altering the extent to which they are ‘present’ and how they choose to withdraw themselves emotionally” (p. 247). Tourist guides are subjected to a form of secondary trauma (guiding tourists across themes and sites of death, horror, and genocide); Leshem [ 98 ] coined this phenomenon as Guiding the Dark Accumulative Psychological Stress. Richardson [ 111 ] also studied the emotional experience of teenage visitors and found that young people experience their visit as “an incomplete and ongoing process in their learning” (p. 77). Applboim and Poria [ 86 ] studied a heritage tourism experience – ‘Witnesses in Uniform’ (a trip to concentration camps in Poland for Israeli Defense Forces personnel), having found that this journey was a reward for their subordinates' good behavior, with the aim of affecting their functioning as military personnel and as citizens. Despite all criticism, Oren and Shani [ 102 ] referred to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum as an example of a well-conducted theming with potential for dark tourism sites by reaching broad audiences and emotionally engaged visitors. Also, “participants' evaluations of seminars for European teachers at Yad Vashem indicate that the location is an important aspect of a meaningful encounter with the subject” [ 2 ]. Griffiths [ 41 ] identified a binary paradox of the guided group tours offered by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum: “the tours assert presence through artifacts, which diminishes a history characterized by absence; they are presented as vehicles of fact when they rely on fictional mechanisms for their narrative constructions; they claim to represent victims, yet employ problematic models of representation; and they assert the significance of the Judecoide, yet downplay the importance of the Birkenau site” (p. 195). The Four Realms of the Experience model (entertainment, education, esthetic, and escapist) [ 106 ] supposes that the more guests are engaged in the experience, the more likely it is that the experience is meaningful or transformational [ 92 ]. Theming consists of five principles: Theme the experience; Harmonize impressions with positive cues; Eliminate negative cues; Mix in memorabilia; and Engage the five senses - THEME [ 106 , 187 ]. The THEME Model [ 106 ] is based on a framework to develop a particular theme or motif for a site, a dominant idea or organizing principle that influences every staged element of an experience. Ward and Hill [ 187 ] stated that some interpretational tools enhance the visitor experience, as provocation is particularly well-suited to Holocaust tourism experiences because it allows visitors to think deeply about the experience. Fisher and Schoemann [ 93 ] proposed that visits to dark tourism sites with virtual reality should accompany current models of dark tourism and “utilize the affordances of the medium to facilitate new opportunities for ethical compassion and understanding in the mediation of mortality” (p. 577). Also, Krisjanous [ 96 ] stated that “websites are a reservoir of multimodal semiotic meaning” (p. 348).

“The attitude of locals towards dark heritage sites (…)” cannot be perceived “without understanding the attitude towards death sites and cemeteries in the cultural context” [ 113 ]. However, including places of death and tragedy in tourism product promotions creates many problems. Phelan [ 105 ] studied the relationship between dark tourism consumption and mortality within contemporary society and considered mortality contemplation a major motivation to visit dark places. Smith [ 115 ] identified three troubling features: the pre-internet phenomenon of dark tourism, the post-internet trope of ‘selfies at Auschwitz’, and genealogy websites. In contrast, Reynolds [ 110 ] stated that “tourists to Holocaust memorial sites become active producers of historical knowledge as they generate their own representations of historical trauma” (p. 334), reflecting on the authentic and inauthentic dimensions of their experiences. Also, Dalziel [ 91 ] revealed that numerous pictures taken at the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial site are not taken mindlessly and enumerated the reasons why individuals take photographs in those dark places: (i) visitors photograph recognizable sights as evidence of their experience, confirming they were there; (ii) aesthetically “pleasing” pictures that provide a distance between the photographer and the horrific views; (iii) educational role as they are records of the experience; (iv) celebrate the victims by apprehending other scenes of remembering: the placing of stones, according to the custom in Jewish culture; flowers and garlands left at locations like the Wall of Death; Jewish youth groups carrying Israeli flags, assembling to pray or celebrate the continuation of Jewish life; (v) express the value of life and survival through their pictures, standing as a testament; and (vi) visitors attempted to position themselves as prisoners and feel the emotions they may have had. Sendyka [ 114 ] considered that Susan Silas (photographer) problematizes the memory and identified various types of non-memory, whereas her camera is driven to places that are “the non-sites of memory” (p. 1). Also, Cole [ 89 ] explained the concept of memory tourism of absence (directing visitors to see the places where Jews lived before the Holocaust) and considered that it can and needs to be historicized. Lennon and Foley [ 97 ] reported that the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., contains more than 5000 artifacts (photographs, uniforms, letters, and a rail car used to take Jewish prisoners to the death camps), as this concern with replication is central to Holocaust memory. Hodgkinson [ 189 ] identified the moral dilemmas of Holocaust representation, such as its commodification for entertainment and tourism. However, according to Wright [ 116 ], if the brutal and murderous nature of humans continues, the potential for tourism in which death is a product of entertainment for a wealthy elite is a reality in the future. Auschwitz-Birkenau is the main example provided by researchers of the darkest tourism sites and was used to distinguish dark tourism and thanatourism; however, Mionel [ 100 ] found that dark tourism comprises thanatourism, but it does not constitute a distinctive form of tourism. Also, Light [ 19 ] considered that research had not yet demonstrated that dark tourism and thanatourism are distinct forms of tourism, and they appear to be little different from heritage tourism.

4.1. Dark tourists’ trivialization of the holocaust dark tourism

Our working hypothesis raised the question as to whether the positive impact of dark tourism on well-being is a way of banalizing the horror? The results of the systematic literature review do not allow the hypothesis to be confirmed, as the positive impact is almost always seen as the result of something transformative [ 92 , 109 , 127 , 133 , 138 ]. The trivialization of horror is not a new concept in the scope of dark tourism. In fact, and according to Heidelberg [ 95 ], dark tourism “commodification of death and suffering could lead to a trivialization of the dark event itself, a ‘Disneyfication’ of tragedy“ (p. 76). Also, concerning the Holocaust, Commane and Potton [ 90 ] stated that “the hint of pleasure in trivializing trauma and horror shows how generic narratives about the Holocaust are neutralized and mocked, even if the user (…) is fully aware of the cultural conditions, ethics, and conscience that shape appropriate response and respect” (p. 175). However, most authors approach the trivialization of horror from the perspective of the promoter of the tourist event or site and not from the point of view of the dark tourist, the only exceptions being those visitors who address the role of selfies and photographs in the context of dark places [ 62 , 82 , 115 ]. There seems to be a gap in the literature regarding the trivialization of horror in the context of dark tourism related to the Holocaust from the perspective of the dark tourist. Indeed, there are not many studies about dark tourists.

4.2. The impact of tourists’ personality dimensions on the ability to banalize the horror

According to Lewis et al. [ 99 ], dark tourists are “curious, interested, and intrigued by dark experiences with paranormal activity, resulting in travel choices made for themselves based on personal beliefs and preferences, with minimal outside influence from others” (p. 1); those that exist [e.g., 76, 126] focus on dimensions of the tourist's personality, per se, but do not establish the relationship between these characteristics and the ability to vulgarize or even neutralize horror. Beech [ 7 ] found two distinct types of visitors: those with personal connections to the site and those more general visitors. For the first type, a concentration camp is not comparable with other tourism products, but, with the progression of time, it is most likely that it will become a more conventional tourist attraction; for this type of visitor, a concentration camp such as Buchenwald exists in an ethical dimension. Also, Yan et al. [ 117 ] identified two types of dark tourists: the curious one that engages cognitively by learning about the issue and the emotional one that reacts emotionally to the “dark” space influence. Based on Deleuze and Guattari's work on aesthetics, Golańska [ 94 ] developed the concept of ‘affective aesthetics’ which refers to a “bodily process, a vital movement that triggers the subject's passionate becoming-other, where ‘becoming’ stands for an intensive flow of affective (micro)perceptions” (p.773). Those who are interested in experiencing the death and suffering of others [ 61 ] for enjoyment, pleasure, and satisfaction are dark tourists [ 121 ]. Furthermore, the notion of benign masochism describes a person's tendency to embrace and seek pleasure through safely playing with a stimulating level of physical pain and negative emotions [ 76 ]. Jovanovic et al. [ 126 ] found that Machiavellianism was positively related to the preference for dark exhibitions; psychopathy to a preference for visiting conflict/battle sites; and sadism was negatively related to the preference for fun factories as an additional type of dark tourism site. However, do these personality dimensions precede the ability to trivialize the horror? Another gap in the literature concerns the personality dimensions of the tourist who does not visit dark places, in light of what has already been studied with dark tourists.

4.3. Understanding the constraints to visiting dark tourism places

There are several reasons for tourist fascination with sites associated with death and tragedy [ 61 ], namely, the interest in specific macabre exhibitions and museums out of curiosity and interest in death [ 190 ]; the entertainment-based museums of torture [ 121 ]; the fascination towards evil [ 69 ]; the nostalgia [ 16 ]; educational purposes [ 2 ]; the interest in genealogy [ 60 ]; cultural interests [ 63 ]; and ‘pilgrimage’ tourism [ 64 ]. However, Sharpley's model [ 191 ], that integrated dark tourism’ supply and demand, stated that not all ‘dark tourism attractions’ are intended to be ‘attractions’, and not all tourists who visit these attractions are strongly interested in death. Ashworth [ 35 ] and Ashworth and Hartmann [ 8 ] suggested three main reasons for visiting dark sites: curiosity about the unusual, attraction to horror, and a desire for empathy or identification with the victims of atrocity. Other authors presented other reasons: secular pilgrimage; a desire for inner purification; schadenfreude or malicious joy; “ghoulish titillation”; a search for the otherness of death; an interest in personal genealogy and family history; nostalgia; a search for ‘authentic’ places in a commodified world; a fascination with evil; and a desire to encounter the pure/impure sacred [ 19 ]. Petrevska et al. [ 104 ] also found several motivations for dark tourism, such as guilt, interest in national history, the revival of a glorious past, economic benefits, display of sympathy, and dark tourism development. Zheng et al. [ 142 ] also found three motivational factors, the most important being the respondents' obligation to visit the site. The motivations found by Isaac et al. [ 34 ] were memory, gaining knowledge and awareness, and exclusivity. Also, Petrevska et al. [ 104 ] stated that the motivations for preserving such dark sites are guilt, facing harsh history, emphasis on dark tourism, the revival of a harmonious past, respect, and economic benefits. Brown [ 88 ] considered that “retail operations of dark tourism sites are highly complex and fraught with potential issues relating to taste and decency” (p. 272). However, there is not the same number of studies on the constraints to visiting dark places. Zhang et al. [ 118 ] studied the intrapersonal constraints to visiting dark sites and found four sub-dimensions: culture, emotion, escape, and incuriousness. Zheng et al. [ 142 ] found seven dimensions of constraints with the most important being an interest in other leisure activities. This asymmetry in the (greater) interest in the motivations behind visiting dark places to the (lesser) detriment of constraints raises some questions, namely, whether it is more difficult to access tourists who do not visit dark places than those who visit them. This gap in the literature (the need to better understand the constraints that prevent tourists from visiting dark places) prevents a broader knowledge of the true dark tourist.

4.4. Holocaust survivors and their descendants’ well-being

Holocaust survivors (HSs) (direct and indirect) presented worse well-being than the control groups. Fňašková et al. [ 162 ] found that the psychological and neurobiological changes across the life of people who outlived severe stress were identified more than seven decades after the Holocaust; severe stress in children and young adults has an irreparable lifelong effect on the brain. Also, Ben-Zur and Zimmerman [ 148 ] found that the Holocaust groups scored higher than the comparison group on ambivalence and negative affect above emotional expression and scored lower on psychosocial adjustment; the authors also found that the consequences of the Holocaust are unmistakable sixty years later, emphasizing the role of ambivalence over emotional expression in the Holocaust survivors' well-being. Amir and Lev-Wiesel [ 143 ] studied post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, subjective quality of life, and psychological distress in a group of adults who were child Holocaust survivors and who were not aware of their identity. Results showed that survivors unaware of their origin had a lower psychological, physical, and social quality of life (QoL) and higher somatization, depression, and anxiety scores than survivors with a known identity. Jaspal and Yampolsky [ 166 ] studied how a group of young Israeli Jews understood and defined their ethnonational identities, focusing on the role of social representations of the Holocaust in the construction of Israeli-Jewish identity; three themes were reported: perceptions of the Holocaust as a personal and shared loss; re-conceptualizing the Holocaust and its impact on intra/intergroup relations; and the Holocaust as a heuristic lens for understanding the Israeli-Arab conflict. Shmotkin et al. [ 180 ] found that women were more likely to be Inflated (high happiness and high suffering) whereas men were more likely to be Deflated (low happiness and low suffering); it was more probable that Holocaust survivors would be Deflated and Unhappy in the negative though not in the positive moments. Weinstein et al. [ 184 ] found that concentration camp/ghetto survivors had poorer global cognitive performance and attention compared to individuals who were not exposed to Holocaust conditions. Isaacowitz et al. [ 165 ] discovered that socioemotional selectivity related to positive mental health in all groups besides the Holocaust survivors, who usually exhibit high negative affect, and social networks of other survivors also undergoing distress. Ohana et al. [ 174 ] found that the Holocaust survivors' subjective health was significantly lower and associated with decreased quality of life. O'Rourke et al. [ 173 ] found that levels of depressive symptoms reported by HSs were significantly greater than other Israelis and older Canadians. Canham et al. [ 152 ] found a higher level of subjective well-being among Canadians in comparison to both comparative Israeli groups HS vs. non-HS; also, depressive symptoms were significantly more elevated among female survivors than in the other two groups; the Israeli women groups had higher levels of anxiety than Canadians. Glicksman [ 163 ] examined the experience of Holocaust survivors in community-based and facility-based long-term care and found differences in certain aspects of mental health and emotional well-being and also found that these differences are associated with the lack of a network of family members as compared to American-born Jews. Shemesh et al. [ 177 ] found that elderly survivors were significantly more distressed than the comparison group. People in hiding, ghettos, labor, or death camps scored higher than survivors in countries occupied by the Nazis that bypassed those experiences; sleep disorders were more frequent among survivors than their counterparts. In addition, among survivors, social activities contributing to well-being were more confined. Podoshen and Hunt [ 107 ] studied why many Jewish tourists avoid tourism to historical heritage sites and found that some tourists avoid travel because of the paucity of Jewish life in the areas surrounding sacred sites, leading to the perception that anti-Semitism is still there. Podoshen et al. [ 108 ] studied the psychological processes of global Jewish tourists and local hosts surrounding historic Holocaust sites in Europe; they found the following processes: stereotyping, the perseverance effect, and the role of atypical information with consequences for collective memory and narrative. Podoshen et al. [ 108 ] feared that current Holocaust tourism and its marketing strategies might bring a disconnect between tourists and hosts in Eastern Europe. Podoshen [ 109 ] explored how Jewish Holocaust tourists organized discourses, made sense of meanings, and engaged with material geographies in an environment of renewed global anti-Semitism and found that certain happenings have a transformative effect. Blankenship [ 87 ] stated that many Jews feel apprehension about visiting Germany; however, numerous memorials and museums dedicated to the Holocaust assure Jewish tourists that the nation is devoted to educating and repairing their relationship with the global Jewish community.

Shmotkin and Lomranz [ 179 ] found that the long-term effects of the Holocaust on the survivors' subjective well-being are traceable but require a differential approach to the study groups and the facets of subjective well-being. Nevertheless, although Kahana et al. [ 167 ] stated that holocaust survivors living in Hungary experienced several postwar periods as highly stressful in addition to the trauma of the Holocaust, they also found that survivors living in the United States, particularly those living in Israel, portray better family life and social and psychological outcomes; on the other hand, survivors living in Hungary point to a lack of social integration and ongoing threats to identity, along with fears about the rise of anti-Semitism, as factors that may adversely impact the maintenance of psychosocial well-being. Bar-Tur et al. [ 146 ] found that past traumatic losses had an impact on well-being in the aging; however, while Holocaust losses had a negative impact, traumatic personal losses had a positive impact. Zeidner and Aharoni-David [ 185 ] found no evidence for the moderating or “buffering” effect of survivors’ sense of coherence (SOC), but supported indirect impacts of SOC on the relationship between memory traces of precise traumatic experiences and adaptive effects; it is very likely that survivors who had painful experiences throughout the Holocaust had to use their strength and coping ability and that prevailing during those horrific years, might have led to a more powerful feeling of meaning and coherence, leading to a greater sense of mental health as they grew old.

However, HSs present high life satisfaction; Bachner et al. [ 144 ] found that it may be not despite but because of experiencing early life trauma, juxtaposing early years with the comparatively good conditions of their lives today. Cohen and Shmotkin [ 155 ] found that Holocaust survivors reported significantly lower happiness in their anchor periods than the comparison groups; happiness and suffering in Holocaust periods (i.e., anchor periods during the Holocaust), when juxtaposed with happiness and suffering in non-Holocaust anchor periods (i.e., anchor periods which occurred before or after the Holocaust), significantly related to the survivors' present happiness and suffering. Elran-Barak et al. [ 160 ] argued that aging Holocaust survivors leaned to concentrate on more vital necessities (e.g., health); in contrast, their peers tended to focus on a broader range of needs (e.g., enjoyment). Aging people in Israel employ proactive (e.g., health) and cognitive (e.g., abiding by the present) adaptation processes, no matter what their known history during the war. Harel et al. [ 164 ] concluded that better health, lower emotional coping, higher instrumental coping, and lesser social concern were important predictors of psychological well-being in survivors and control groups. Amidst survivors, those four variables, together with being married, having more infrequent life crises, contact with co-workers, and not being surrendered to fate, explained 52% of the psychological well-being variance. Among control groups, these four variables, along with an easygoing personality style and good communication with one's spouse, explained 36% of the psychological well-being variance. Bar-Tur and Levy-Shiff [ 145 ] and Shrira and Shmotkin [ 181 ] found that even after immense trauma and rush decline related to old age, the past can hold life agreeable, as suggested by the more powerful relation of past happiness, compared to past grief, with life satisfaction. Nonetheless, past suffering was related to life satisfaction among the Holocaust survivors and displayed a more substantial effect among most old parties. Canham et al. [ 152 ] indicated that perseverance, survival, and resilience were essential to participants across the war and how these topics explained their choices and understanding of their lives. Resilience and remembrance are continuous and interconnected processes through which survivors adjust their previous lives to the present. O'Rourke et al. [ 173 ] found that early life trauma does not appear to fundamentally affect associations between reminiscence and health, as these findings underscore the resilience of Holocaust survivors. Barel et al. [ 147 ] studied the long-term sequelae of genocide and found that Holocaust survivors were less well adjusted; in particular, they showed substantially more posttraumatic stress symptoms yet remarkable resilience; also, the coexistence of stress-related signs and adequate adaptation in other areas of functioning may be attributed to the distinctive characteristics of the symptoms of the Holocaust survivors, who combine resilience with defensive processes. Finally, living in Israel instead of elsewhere can be a protective factor regarding psychological well-being [ 147 ]. Corley [ 156 ] discussed the intersection of the creativity and resilience of artists who survived the Holocaust and how these creative expressions have enhanced personal and community well-being.

The Holocaust disrupted the generational transmission of family health, and daily efforts are needed to invert the consequences of the Holocaust and establish relations with succeeding generations. Shrira et al. [ 182 ] noted that transgenerational impacts of the Holocaust may be more substantial among middle-aged OHS as they once suffered from early turbulent natal and postnatal conditions and now confront age-related decline. Nevertheless, middle-aged OHS may successfully preserve the strength they presented at a younger age. OHS, specifically those with two survivor parents, conveyed a more elevated sense of well-being but more physical health issues than the comparison group. Parental trauma incidents could evolve into family secrets, promoting the intergenerational transmission of behavioral patterns and suffering similar to the patterns seen in families where incest and violence have been transmitted across generations [ 172 ]. Dalgaard and Montgomery [ 157 ] carried out a systematic review of trauma communication in refugee families and found that a “conspiracy of silence” was the cause of suffering within the families of Holocaust survivors [ 151 ]. Bezo and Maggi [ 149 ] investigated the perceived intergenerational impact of the forced starvation-genocide and reported adverse physical health outcomes and adverse well-being across three generations. Primarily survivors' descendants declared that the mass trauma generated psychological, biological, and social processes that have negatively impacted physical health throughout generations. Dashorst et al. [ 158 ] studied the intergenerational consequences of the Holocaust on offsprings' mental health and found that parent and child characteristics and their interaction contributed to the development of psychological symptoms and biological and epigenetic variations; also, parental mental health issues, attachment quality, perceived parenting, and parental gender impacted the mental well-being of their descendants. Moreover, bearing two survivor parents led to more mental health issues than holding one parent. At last, Dashorst et al. [ 158 ] found that Holocaust survivor offspring showed a heightened vulnerability to stress in the face of actual danger. Letzter-Pouw and Werner [ 171 ] found that survivors' intrusive memories were related to the loss of parents in the Holocaust and their symptoms of distress. The latter was related to the offspring's perceived transmission of the trauma of the mothers, which was associated with more symptoms of distress among offspring. According to Letzter-Pouw and Werner [ 171 ], due to female survivors' uncompleted mourning processes and subsequent suffering from intrusive memories, the emotional burden of the Holocaust was transmitted to the eldest offspring and caused them more symptoms of distress. Kalmijn [ 168 ] stated that the hypothesis of secondary traumatization supposes that youngsters brought up by parents who were traumatized by warfare show more mental health issues than other children. Adults whose parents suffered from World War II held poorer mental health and underwent more negative life circumstances. Furthermore, traumatized parents have more unsatisfactory relationships with their children when they become adults. Bilewicz and Wojcik [ 150 ] concluded that the syndrome of secondary traumatic strain was observed among 13.2% of high school visitors to the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial museum. Furthermore, empathic responses to the visit to Auschwitz (e.g., more prominent inclusion of victims into the self) were related to increased secondary traumatic stress one month after the visit.

Felsen [ 161 ] stated that adult children of Holocaust survivors presented “accentuated sibling differentiation and de-identification, manifested in the respective family roles of each sibling, their relationships vis a vis the parents, and also in the siblings' general adaptation styles” (p. 1), accompanied by a negative quality of the sibling relationships. Felsen [ 161 ] proposed that “(dissociated) affects and enactments of un-synthesized parental trauma infuse implicit and explicit interactions in family life with survival themes and with intense concerns for the parents' emotional well-being and polarize normative processes of sibling differentiation” (p.1). Felsen [ 161 ] stated that resentments cause dissolution of ties between siblings and their families in adulthood as these processes are an “intergenerational transmission of effects related to parental trauma that extend beyond the parent-child dyad, influencing the matrix of relationships in the family-as-a-system, and damaging the siblings' bond” (p.1). Raalte et al. [ 176 ] found that the quality of postwar care arrangements and existing physical health alone forecasted a lack of well-being at an old age. Moreover, the lack of fine care after the ending of World War II is related to lower youngest Holocaust child survivors' well-being, even after an intervening time span of six decades, validating Keilson's idea of sequential traumatization [ 169 ] enhancing after-trauma care in lowering the consequence of early childhood trauma. Weinberg and Cummins [ 183 ] found that offspring of Holocaust survivors (with two survivor parents) reported lower general positive mood than non-OHS. Oren and Shavit [ 175 ] examined how the Subjective Holocaust Influence Level (SHIL) of Holocaust survivors' offspring (OHS) is reflected in their daily life, habits, and well-being and found that higher SHIL correlated with increased worry, as they are more suspicious of others, have higher anxiety concerns about the future, feel the need to survive, risk aversion, self-rated health, and unwillingness to discard food. Kidron et al. [ 170 ] questioned the pathologized and vulnerable descendants of the Holocaust and found unique local configurations of emotional vulnerability and strength in these descendants. “Respondents normalize and valorize emotional wounds describing them as a “scratch” and as a “badge of honor” (…). Results point to ways that resilience and vulnerability may interact, qualifying one another in the process of meaning-making” (p. 1). Diamond and Ronel [ 159 ] started from the principle that forgiveness is effective in helping to reduce anger, stress, and despair and in cultivating an overall sense of well-being following man-made traumatic experiences and studied the case of Eva Mozes-Kor, a child Holocaust survivor and a “Mengele twin,” who extended forgiveness to her direct perpetrators. Findings indicate a life-changing conversion with the lasting effects of high interpersonal, intrapersonal, and spiritual integration levels. Carbone [ 153 ] questioned the causal relationship between the representation of war and the promotion of peace and suggested the use of the ‘the forgiveness model’ to give rise to a different kind of war museum narrative along with a “theoretical model on tourism and peace based on the conception of war-related attractions as local infrastructures for peace” (p. 565). Vollhardt et al. [ 178 ] carried out four experiments in the context of dark events (namely, the Holocaust) and studied the consequences of experiencing acknowledgment (as opposed to the lack of acknowledgment) of documented ingroup victimization on psychological well-being and intergroup concerns. Players in the acknowledgment condition noted higher psychological well-being and remarkable readiness to reconcile with the former perpetrator group compared to participants in the no acknowledgment condition and a neutral baseline control condition. In short, although some authors found a negative impact on the well-being of Holocaust survivors, others managed to find positive aspects despite the negative ones. However, when addressing the well-being of the survivors' descendants, most authors find a negative impact of this transgenerationality on well-being. This “apparent” contradiction may constitute another gap in the literature, with the need to study the few survivors that remain and their own descent.

4.5. Holocaust dark tourism's positive and negative impacts on well-being

Dark tourism's negative impact on well-being is well documented. The literature presents the negative impact of dark tourism on well-being; the negative and positive aspects; and, finally, the positive aspects.

Sharpley and Stone [ 1 ] identified five factors that ensure the effectiveness of heritage sites (the nature of the cruelty perpetrated; the nature of the victims; the nature of the perpetrators; the high-profile visibility of the original event; and the survival of the record), by ensuring emotional impact. Liyanage et al. [ 72 ] showed that the feelings of sadness, depression, anger, and existential questions could haunt visitors for some time after visiting a concentration camp. Abraham et al. [ 58 ] studied the emotions of the victims' descendants in visiting dark tourism sites and found that the image of these sites was a mediator between emotions of animosity and grief. Bauer [ 59 ] studied the impact of death as an attraction of travelers whose scars remain invisible, especially on those with a diagnosed mental illness. Moreover, Prayag et al. [ 77 ] apprised mortality salience and significance in life for locals visiting dark tourism sites. Finally, Zhang et al. [ 83 ] stated that self-categorization was evident in visitors' experience of disaster sites, as depersonalizing statements tended to be other-focused. According to Knudsen and Waade [ 67 ], thanatourism is a means of producing ‘authentic feelings’, as visiting thanatouristic sites triggers certain emotions [ 192 ], namely, ‘dark’ emotions [e.g., pain, horror, sadness; [ 193 ]]. Wight [ 82 ] stated that besides emotions typically identified in studies of dark tourism (e.g., sadness, empathy), there is some moral panic towards ‘other’ tourists at Holocaust heritage sites and anxieties towards the Holocaust spaces as tourist attractions. Wight [ 82 ] discussed the selfies at Holocaust memorial sites, considering them an offense and a normalized form of self-expression; Wight [ 82 ] also considered that museums are places of ‘self-identity work’ and profound self-reflection. However, simplistic interpretations of dark selfies deny the complexity of the “trauma selfie as a cultural practice and what this act might reveal about new modes of witnessing stemming from new technologies” [ 62 ].

However, Kidron [ 66 ] found that “co-presence in sites of atrocity enables the performance of survivor emotions tacitly present in the home, thereby evoking descendant empathy and identification” (p. 175). Also, Nawijn and Fricke [ 74 ] showed that visitor emotions in a concentration camp are more intensely negative than positive emotions, despite certain negative emotions also having the power to broaden and build. Liyanage et al. [ 72 ] also found that other forms of existential self-reflection were common, including a sense of appreciation for the value of life, freedom, and quality of life. Oren et al. [ 103 ] reported the co-existence of positive/ pleasant and negative/ unpleasant emotions such as pride, satisfaction, frustration, sadness, and anger that emerge at a heritage site, yet expressed the centrality of negative emotions. Oren et al. [ 44 ] found that negative emotions contribute to visitors’ satisfaction, and the perceived benefits derived from the visit. Furthermore, it is important to “reveal how the balance between fear and loathing, and laughter and liking are reconciled in the dark tourism experience” [ 78 ]. Nawijn et al. [ 75 ] stated that the effects of personality on meaning in life were marginal; only emotion of interest positively contributes to finding positive meaning in life. Also, Nawijn et al. [ 46 ] found that although most respondents expect to feel disgust, shock, compassion, and sadness, individuals close to the Holocaust expect to feel most emotions more intensely (mainly positive emotions, such as pride, love, joy, inspiration, excitement, and affection); from the viewpoint of the offenders, they mainly expect to feel negative emotions, whereas from the point of view of the victims, they also expect positive emotions. Concerning the positive impact of dark tourism on well-being, Smith and Diekmann [ 80 ] demonstrated the complexity of the relationship between well-being and tourism with a diversity of experiences: (i) episodic, hedonic forms of tourism; (ii) educational, cultural tourism; (iii) spiritual pilgrimage trips that enhance a sense of existential authenticity; and (iv) trips that imply altruistic or ethical dimensions (e.g., volunteer tourism).

Several authors tried to answer the question of how dark tourism can convey well-being: some see dark tourism as a mechanism of resilience that helps a community to recover after a disaster; others see the pedagogical functions of dark tourism as a way to develop empathy with the Other's pain [ 79 ]. Other authors considered that dark tourism improves tourists' emotional and spiritual well-being [ 44 , 130 ]. Reconciliation is the common aim of the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, based on the Holocaust, the New York Tolerance Center, and the Jerusalem Centre for Human Dignity, as it improves well-being, as interpretation is central to reconciliation [ 65 ]. According to Wang et al. [ 194 ], interpretation quality is essential for tourists to appreciate the benefits of dark tourism sites; besides, dark tourists' interpretation satisfaction and benefits gained will positively impact their overall satisfaction. Some criteria must be observed in the tourism of reconciliation, namely, location (a site to which visitors are attracted), presentation (should ensure a sense of place), development and maintenance (especially through donation), and collaboration with non-tourism interests [ 65 ]. Wang et al. [ 194 ] also identified some benefits of dark tourism: individual spiritual sublimation and thoughts and feelings for the collective and the country. Social capital happens through social interaction and ultimately contributes to community well-being [Bowdin, 2011, cit in 186]. According to Wang et al. [ 194 ], interpretation quality is an important antecedent for tourists to appreciate the benefits they obtained from dark tourism sites; in addition, their interpretation satisfaction and benefits gained will positively impact their overall satisfaction.

Lacanienta et al. [ 45 ] found that lighter dark tourism experiences (e.g., execution square and the ghost tour) were more affectively pleasing and raised a stronger sense of agency (inclination to act) than darker tourism experiences; the latter (e.g., Auschwitz and Schindler's Factory) were more provocative, valued, and meaningful. Also, Lee and Jeong [ 68 ] found that a sense of sadness contributes to establishing meaning [ 46 ]; some tourists reported less satisfaction when a visit is not ‘sad enough’ [ 118 ]. “Indeed, consuming dark tourism may allow the individual a sense of meaning and understanding of past disaster and macabre events that have perturbed life projects” [ 1 ]. Human identity could become salient during the Holocaust [ 195 ], contributing to the psychological shift [ 84 ]. Zheng et al. [ 85 ] stated that positive emotional experiences (i.e., appreciation) have a direct positive effect on spiritual meaning, but not negative emotional experiences: sorrow, shock, and depression only indirectly create meaning. Lin and Nawijn [ 70 ] stated that positive emotions fluctuate during the tourist experience, peaking during vacation [ 73 ]; negative emotions remain less intense and constant throughout vacations [ 71 ], except in specific contexts, such as in darker forms of dark tourism [ 74 ].

Nawijn and Fricke [ 74 ] consider that dark tourism is emotionally laden, as experiencing it is subjective and personal [ 131 ], and includes positive and negative experiences [ 124 , 134 , 135 ]. Cave and Buda [ 122 ] called it the “emotional souvenirs process” (p. 707–726). According to Wang et al. [ 140 ], emodiversity is an empirical construct in tourism stating that tourists experience diverse emotions when traveling; also, emodiversity (involving positive or negative emotions) is consistently linked to greater well-being. Wang et al. [ 140 ] claim positive outcomes of negative emotions: when tourists experience several negative emotions, they are less likely to be dominated by detrimental emotions (e.g., anxiety), and they are more likely to show adequate cognitive resources to catharsis and achieve self-enhancement. Also, Nawijn and Biran [ 133 ] found that negative emotions are part of the tourist experience, specifically in dark tourism and trips concerning the changeover of the self; undoubtedly, the authors found that negative emotions have numerous positive results in hedonic and non-hedonic tourism contexts; similarly, negative emotions contribute to eudaimonic experiences by involving various types of meaning in life. Sharpley and Stone [ 136 ] wondered why tourism, a form of contemporary consumption, has come to be considered a potential source of happiness and well-being. Undoubtedly, in dark tourism, emotional value was found to be the strongest influencer of satisfaction [ 134 ]. At the same time, dark tourism sites contribute to the well-being of residents by becoming a place for reflection and assessment of one's journey of recovery post-disaster [ 125 ].

Accordingly, Laing and Frost [ 128 ] and Martini and Buda [ 131 ] stated that there are psychological benefits from engagement in dark tourism experiences [ 119 ]: to fulfill an obligation, develop the memory, become resilient, escape, relax [ 118 ], and to confront personal fears of death [ 19 ]. In addition, dark tourism develops curiosity and satisfies the desire for knowledge of past suffering and pain [ 136 ]. Zheng et al. [ 85 ] stated that dark tourism experiences raise a mixed and ambivalent emotional experience and confirmed the usefulness of these experiences for the five emotions: fear, sorrow, shock, appreciation, and depression. Wang et al. [ 141 ] studied the awe emotion in dark tourist destinations and found that the experience of authenticity is one of the antecedents of this emotion.

According to Magee and Gilmore [ 130 ], heritage sites no longer want to be seen as dark places; they want to become sites of sensitive heritage focused on visitor and social engagement. Understanding how service organizations may improve the welfare of individuals and communities is important to promoting human well-being and is the aspiration of transformative service research [ 130 ]. Transformative tourism is a process where tourists engage in an inner journey [ 138 ] as a part of the awakening of consciousness, creating more self-awareness, self-inquiry into the purpose of life, and living by a higher set of values [ 137 ]. Collins [ 123 ] studied the symbols and images that transformed tourists associate with their life-changing experiences [ 127 ], after creating a list of ingredients that must be present for any ritual interaction to be successful, which applies to creating a transformative tourism experience. Tourists' emotional experience can be strengthened by acquiring knowledge and contact with tangible objects [ 121 ]. If tourists perceive their visit to dark tourism as valuable, their satisfaction level will increase [ 134 ]. Indeed, the goal of self-search is an existential search for happiness, well-being, and life satisfaction [ 132 ].

The concept of embodiment studied the connection between feeling and body in dark tourism [ 139 ]. In embodiment cognition theory, sensory experiences and bodily feelings are the information sources that subconsciously influence people's cognition, emotions, and behavior [ 120 ]. These authors showed that the dark experience exerts an effect on the participants' sensory expression in a mind-to-body pathway; the authors also showed that others could decode the expressions of darkness in another body-to-mind pathway; finally, the authors stated that different dark levels of a product (e.g., photos) on a website affect tourists' feelings: the darker they feel, the darker the photos they took. Lv et al. [ 129 ] found that visual sensory experience directly affects tourists' psychological experience and behavior. The body's influence on psychology is unconscious and does not come from the meaning of the information; this suggests that besides mental processing, there are non-mental paths between body and mind [ 129 ]. There is abundant literature concerned with this theme of well-being (or not) raised by dark tourism, although it is somewhat contradictory. It is important to identify this contradiction as a gap in the literature to clarify under what circumstances dark tourism associated with the Holocaust can have a positive or negative impact on well-being.

Major methodological limitations were the lack of randomized allocation, standardized outcome definitions, and suboptimal comparison groups. The vast majority of papers included in this systematic review are theoretical, which makes it difficult to compare and generalize the results, introducing biases. Thus, more empirical studies are needed to achieve a future systematic review including only empirical works. With the aim to minimize threats to the validity of the results of this study, potential issues were identified, and mitigation strategies were applied. In systematic reviews, the risk of the omission of relevant studies is a concern. Thus, in this study, snowballing was conducted in order to minimize this risk. Also, detailed inclusion/exclusion and quality criteria were applied during the selection stage. Finally, data extraction was carefully carried out by both authors until consensus was achieved.

5. Conclusion

In this study, we have performed a systematic literature review focused on peer-review articles and books, after analyzing their contributions to the topics related to our research question: is feeling well-being, as a consequence of dark tourism, a way of banalizing the horror? Following PRISMA's recommendations, the authors are confident that the review was thoroughly carried out and that the relevant contributions were identified. As such, this article contributes to research in several ways. First, it delivers a systematic review of the topics, which are dark tourism, the Holocaust, and well-being, based on a selection of 144 references (126 research articles and 18 books and book chapters), whose relevant contributions have been categorized comprehensively and given way to discussion. We hypothesized that dark tourism that generates negative emotions, also creates positive emotions that contribute to well-being. The findings enhance such positive impacts on well-being under different circumstances; however, the hypothesis could not be confirmed, as the positive impact is almost always seen as the result of something transformative.

The SLR provided the identification of several gaps: the trivialization of horror in the context of Holocaust-related dark tourism from the perspective of the dark tourist; the personality dimensions of the tourist who does not visit dark places (in light of what has already been carried out vis-à-vis dark tourists); understanding of the constraints for tourists to visit dark tourism destinations; explaining Holocaust survivors and their descendants’ well-being (somehow contradictory); and the lack of clarification concerning under what circumstances dark tourism associated with the Holocaust can positively or negatively impact well-being. Addressing these gaps and their inherent ambiguities and contradictions could constitute areas for future research.

Positive and negative impacts on Holocaust dark tourists' well-being are associated with the marketing and management, promotion, digital communication, guiding, or storytelling design of such locations. Tailored promotion, for example, could trigger the target visitors’ interest and motivation for visiting Holocaust and Holocaust-related destinations, thus increasing the number of visitors, their satisfaction, and well-being.

Author contribution statement

José Magano, José António Fraiz-Brea, Ângela Leite: Conceived and designed the experiments; Analyzed and interpreted the data; Contributed materials, analysis tools or data; Wrote the paper.

Funding statement

This research received no external funding.

Data availability statement

Declaration of interest statement.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

No additional information is available for this paper.

Educating the (Dark) Masses: Dark Tourism and Sensemaking

• First Online: 21 February 2018

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• Catherine Roberts 6  

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Dark tourism’s potential capacity to inform and reflect contemporary interpretive and pedagogic theory and praxis is unique and substantial. Themes and events of historical, political and social significance, and the emotional, sociocultural and psychological responses they may elicit, offer distinct opportunities to explore and affect learning, critical thinking and meaning-making processes in contemporary touristic contexts. Yet, the place and role of dark tourism behaviours and site management in educative and sensemaking contexts is neither fully represented, nor theorised, within current dark tourism conceptual frameworks. In this chapter, I review the distinctions, dimensions and environments of dark tourism alongside its conceptual connections with allied fields. Subsequently, I explore some emotional, sensory and relational aspects of dark tourism and their relevance to learning and interpretive processes and theories, including and especially experiential learning. Within this chapter I identify interpretive approaches, considerations and challenges that are particularly relevant to dark tourism themes and locations, and call for further research and discourse to underpin future conceptualisations and practices of dark tourism and sensemaking.

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Roberts, C. (2018). Educating the (Dark) Masses: Dark Tourism and Sensemaking. In: R. Stone, P., Hartmann, R., Seaton, T., Sharpley, R., White, L. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Dark Tourism Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47566-4_25

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A decaying symbol of infamy: How time and mass tourism are crushing Auschwitz and its memory

'People always complain about Auschwitz as a tourist site and, of course, with so many people wanting to visit, it cannot be anything but a tourist site'

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The pan-fried chicken wasn’t hot enough at the gates of Auschwitz. Another patron whines the coffee costs more than in Krakow.

The concerns of tourists in a restaurant at the mouth of the world’s most horrid place reveal a paradox. The paradox of Auschwitz.

“Where do you put the public toilets at Auschwitz?” laments Robert Jan van Pelt, a University of Waterloo architecture professor who is a world authority on the site and who developed a master plan for the preservation of Auschwitz and its legacy.

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“People always complain about Auschwitz as a tourist site and, of course, with so many people wanting to visit, it cannot be anything but a tourist site,” says van Pelt. “This is the reality of mass tourism.”

But Auschwitz isn’t Disney World. It wasn’t built to be beautiful, nor designed for enjoyment or comfort. It wasn’t even built to last.

“It is an impossible task.”

The realities of mass tourism that is destroying Venice and Amsterdam are destroying Auschwitz,

Auschwitz is now the symbol of the Holocaust.

Although there were other death camps run by Nazi Germany during the Second World War, and, in fact, mobile death squads roaming Europe as part of Adolf Hitler’s so-called “Final Solution,” it is the bleak, brick chimneys of Auschwitz, its metal gates adorned with the motto Arbeit macht frei — the grotesque lie that work sets you free — and the barbed-wire fences where starving prisoners once stood in striped uniforms that symbolize the Holocaust.

It has become iconography, shorthand for horror.

Auschwitz and the Holocaust are so synonymous that the camp’s date of liberation — 75 years ago on Monday — when Soviet Red Army troops reached the camp on Jan. 27, 1945, was chosen as the annual International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

It is at Auschwitz that an estimated 1.1 million people, mostly European Jews, were killed and incinerated.

Post-war, and particularly post-Cold War when the Iron Curtain dropped, Auschwitz emerged as a symbol, as the symbol, as the landmark most famous for its infamy.

In response, it became a tourist hit.

More than twice as many people as were killed in Auschwitz from 1940 to 1945 now visit the site each year. Attendance broke another record in 2019, with 2,320,000 registered visitors, according to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.

The site, some of it already in ruins from retreating Nazi soldiers trying to destroy the evidence of its purpose, has been further reduced by time and wear and tear.

The popularity of Auschwitz is now choking it.

“The realities of mass tourism that is destroying Venice and Amsterdam are destroying Auschwitz,” says van Pelt.

“We are entering the last decade of having survivors with us who are able to testify as eyewitnesses. Along with losing the eyewitnesses, the site itself, in its present, sprawling form, cannot be maintained forever.

“We are losing another touchstone of authenticity.”

The paradox of Auschwitz. This place that should not have been built now desperately needs preserving.

For survivors of Auschwitz, the camp is more than a relic. It is a huge, gnawing part of their life and legacy.

Their eyewitness testimony to the crimes here are filled with mournful accounts of seeing their mother or father or child or siblings pushed towards the belching chimneys of the crematoria.

“In a few years there won’t be a single survivor of the camps left, there is no getting away from that,” says Auschwitz survivor Paul Herczeg, now 90, living in Montreal and battling cancer.

“While we remain alive, as eyewitnesses, we have to testify to what has happened and to the importance of it.”

When the last of the survivors are no longer here, the guard towers, gates and crematoria of Auschwitz will be the best reminder of how dark humanity can turn.

Herczeg first returned to Auschwitz in the early 1970s with his best friend, Otto Schimmel, who survived the camp with him. He went again a few years later as part of a delegation of survivors to discuss the future of the site, and twice more with family and friends.

This was, Herczeg notes, before it “became fashionable.”

“Everybody comes out of there a changed person. History is the greatest teacher. We need to remember history. We cannot hide history.

“It’s not for the past. It’s for the sake of the future.”

Auschwitz’s importance was grasped, by some more than others, almost immediately, and within a year of the end of the war, plans were made to protect the site and a museum was opened in 1947.

Located 50 kilometres west of Krakow, Poland’s second-largest city, the grounds the museum controls cover 191 hectares: 20 hectares are Auschwitz I, the first camp built there, and 171 hectares are at neighbouring Auschwitz II-Birkenau.

On that land are several hundred buildings and ruins, including the ruins of the gas chambers and crematoria. There are kilometres of camp fencing, roads and the railroad ramp at Birkenau where prisoners arrived and were “selected” — between those who looked able to work and those sent immediately to their death.

Auschwitz-Birkenau was added to the United Nation’s list of world heritage sites in 1979.

There is discomfort for some with the special place Auschwitz now holds in Holocaust history.

“The word ‘Auschwitz’ has become a metonym for the Holocaust as a whole. Yet the vast majority of Jews had already been murdered, further east, by the time  Auschwitz became a major killing facility,” U.S. historian Timothy Snyder wrote in his book Black Earth. “Yet while Auschwitz has been remembered, most of the Holocaust has been largely forgotten.”

For him, one reason for its famed infamy is, in another Auschwitz paradox, that for a death camp there were a lot of survivors.

Without survivors, dry archeological digs and academic studies would have smothered the stark terror of the place.

Unlike Auschwitz, virtually no Jews survived the death camps at Treblinka, Sobibór, Bełżec or Chełmno. Likely none forced to kneel before an open killing pit by mobile killing squads, the Einsatzgruppen, walked away. But Auschwitz, built as both a forced labour camp and a death camp, was different. A few who entered found an exit.

Further, Snyder wrote, those survivors were mostly Western European Jews. After the war, they returned to the West where they could write memoirs and share their stories in a way that Eastern European Jews behind the Iron Curtain couldn’t.

Snyder fears this reduces the magnitude of the Holocaust.

“Auschwitz has been a relatively manageable symbol for Germany after the Second World War, significantly reducing the actual scale of the evil done,” he writes. “The gates and walls of Auschwitz can seem to contain an evil that, in fact, extended from Paris to Smolensk.”

Van Pelt expresses some sympathy for that.

“One of the problems with the success of Auschwitz is that other places of the Holocaust are suffering. Dachau, for example, has too few visitors and Auschwitz has too many. It would be good if the wealth could be spread,” says van Pelt.

It has been difficult to reimagine Auschwitz as a tourist site.

Not only do the normal laws of tourist economics not apply — pushing visitors through a gaudy gift shop at the end, for instance. Even an entrance fee is seen as an unsatisfactory barrier. There are facilities, now — public toilets, a shop to buy informational books and DVDs; even a restaurant, garnering tepid online culinary reviews, has been built just outside, although it is not owned by the museum.

There have been patches of its post-war history where action on the site was paralyzed by competing sensitivities.

Part of the problem was the Nazis hated so many. Although Jews bore a painful brunt of Hitler’s machinery, there were huge numbers of non-Jewish Russians and Poles, political prisoners, Catholics, Roma, homosexuals killed at Auschwitz. Each community feels a special attachment.

Much of that has been sorted now.

But new culprits are arriving: success and opportunism.

Informative exhibits at the camp are displayed in original, historical buildings that were never imagined for this use. They were built to house soldiers. They are not climate controlled. They cannot properly accommodate the crush of visitors.

“Right now, visitors get stuck, literally, as they move through these buildings because they are very narrow rooms,” van Pelt says. “In order to create a modern exhibition in these buildings, all kinds of very difficult decisions need to made on the preservation front.”

Birkenau, the largest of more than 40 camps and sub-camps that made up the Auschwitz complex, is enormous, much of it in ruins. Some 400 brick chimneys are all that remains of wooden buildings that once housed prisoners.

“There are buildings that are really fragile ruins and you really don’t want anyone to step on those ruins and there are always people who will ignore it,” says van Pelt.

“You see from time to time groups of Israeli students climb on the roof of the crematorium to wave a flag. It is really problematic from the point of view of preserving those ruins.”

The best way to control where people can and can’t go is with a high fence, but erecting fresh fences at Auschwitz is, again, problematic. In some way, every part of Auschwitz should be accessible.

“It is extremely expensive to maintain it. There are too many artifacts. People have to make choices — and at Auschwitz, that’s an impossible task.”

The other challenge is development, capitalism at work.

At its peak activity in 1944, Auschwitz’s footprint on the area covered 40 square kilometres with sub-camps beyond that. Today, much of that property is in private hands, outside the control, or even the influence, of the state museum.

That land is full of historically meaningful and important remains of the site under no preservation policy or oversight. Over time, some of the old barracks have ended up in people’s gardens.

“There is enormous pressure of development all around the site,” van Pelt says. “Private business is very much exploiting the economic opportunity that comes from 2.3 million visitors.”

The spot where the gassing of the Jews first started is called Bunker 1. It was also known as the Little Red House because it was a cottage converted into two early gas chambers on the outskirts of the camp.

The building is demolished, the ground planted over.

“It is a very important historical site and for the last five or six years there has been construction around it. People are developing their property. Now you are in a neighbourhood.

“Inside Birkenau, there is only a barbed-wire fence. There is incredible transparency. You can see what is happening on the other side. You can see the parking lot, you can see the reception centre, the businesses.”

Physical stuff — the actual sites and eyewitnesses — are special ways to learn of the Holocaust, but there are other ways. Part of van Pelt’s recent work has been providing one answer — exporting the story of Auschwitz outside the barbed wire.

In collaboration with the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, a huge exhibit called “Auschwitz: Not Long Ago. Not far Away” tells the story of Auschwitz and the Holocaust through 750 historic artifacts. First held in Madrid, it is currently open in New York City. Van Pelt hopes to bring it to Canada.

Sparked by the exhibit, previously unknown artifacts have come to light, including a shofar, a musical instrument made of a ram’s horn important in Judaism and blown on Jewish High Holy Days, that was kept hidden and secretly blown in Auschwitz. It was smuggled out by a survivor sent on a “death march” west in 1945.

As survivors emerged from the camps, some took items that held meaning for them. Then they emigrated around the world. Artifacts of the Holocaust and of Auschwitz are in private and public collections in many countries, including the Montreal Holocaust Museum.

These will act as memory, as memorial and as evidence.

“We have no other comparable catastrophe, if there is any comparable catastrophe, that we have so many artifacts with personal stories attached to them,” van Pelt says.

“The Holocaust is, in general, still the best-documented genocide in world history.”

READ MORE STORIES ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST:

Opinion: The enormity of the horror of Auschwitz transcends our ability to imagine what happened there

‘People didn’t believe’: Auschwitz’s dwindling survivors recount horrors of Nazi death camp

Poll on Canadian attitudes towards Auschwitz suggests gaps in knowledge of Holocaust, anti-Semitism

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• Psychologie/Hirnforschung

»Dark Tourism«: Reise ins Grauen

»dark tourism« : reise ins grauen.

Ein gepflegtes Hotel, wenige Schritte bis zum Meer und jede Menge Sonne. So sieht für viele Menschen der perfekte Urlaub aus. Aber längst nicht für alle. Manche zieht es an jene düsteren Orte, an denen in der Vergangenheit Grauenhaftes geschehen ist: die Konzentrationslager Auschwitz oder Buchenwald, die Atomkatastrophe von Tschernobyl oder die Schlacht von Verdun. Das Reisen an die schrecklichen Schauplätze der Geschichte bezeichnen Forscher als »Dark Tourism«. Besonders Sozialwissenschaftler interessieren sich dafür, warum Menschen freiwillig an Orte reisen, die an Leid und Tod erinnern. Ist das gedankenloses Sightseeing, Lust auf Gänsehautgefühle – oder steckt etwas anderes dahinter?

Ein weit gereister deutscher »Dark Tourist« ist der Linguist Peter Hohenhaus: Auf seiner Website bietet er einen Überblick über rund 700 Reiseziele in 90 Ländern. Viele davon hat er selbst besucht, etwa die »Killing Fields« der Roten Khmer in Kambodscha, die Sperrzone um den Atomkern von Tschernobyl sowie Ruanda, wo Angehörige der Hutu-Mehrheit 1994 drei Viertel der Tutsi-Minderheit sowie moderate Hutu töteten. Schätzungen zufolge starben bei dem Völkermord bis zu eine Million Menschen. Eingeschlagene Schädel und Haufen noch sichtbar blutdurchtränkter Kleidung erinnern an das Grauen. »Die Gedenkstätten sind sehr drastisch«, sagt Hohenhaus. Dass jemand sie aus Lust am Grusel aufsucht, hält er für abwegig, an der Grenze zur Beleidigung.

Bei ihm, Jahrgang 1963, liege der Schlüssel in der eigenen Biografie: Die Eltern sind Vertriebene; als Kind besuchte er mit seiner Familie Kriegsrelikte im Hamburger Hafen. Mit elf Jahren stand er an der Berliner Mauer, fuhr durch die Geisterbahnhöfe der geteilten Stadt. Zu den Stätten des Kalten Kriegs fühlt er sich bis heute am stärksten hingezogen. Noch immer treibe ihn das Interesse an authentischen Orten, das Bedürfnis, »den eigenen Horizont zu erweitern«.

Obschon es auch an Orten wie Tschernobyl inzwischen geführte Touren gibt, ist »Dark Tourism« noch längst nicht im Massengeschäft angekommen. Eine wachsende Nachfrage nach entsprechenden Destinationen lasse sich anhand von Zahlen nicht belegen, sagt eine Sprecherin des Deutschen Reiseverbands.

Auf die Frage, warum jemand zum »dunklen Touristen« wird, gibt es bislang keine eindeutige Antwort. Erst in jüngerer Zeit hat das Phänomen überhaupt größere wissenschaftliche Aufmerksamkeit erlangt. Der Begriff »Dark Tourism« wurde 1996 von den britischen Tourismusforschern John Lennon und Malcolm Foley geprägt. Schon drei Jahre zuvor hatte der Soziologe Chris Rojek vom University College London historische »Black Spots« (schwarze Flecken) zusammengetragen, an denen Berühmtheiten eines gewaltsamen Todes starben, etwa John F. Kennedy in Dallas 1963.

Seit 2012 existiert an der University of Central Lancashire in Großbritannien ein eigenes Institut zur Erforschung von »Dark Tourism« . Leiter Philip Stone versteht darunter »das Besichtigen von Orten, Attraktionen und Ausstellungen, welche Tod, Leid oder das scheinbar Makabre als Hauptthema haben«. Das habe eine lange Tradition, darunter die Gladiatorenspiele im Römischen Reich oder öffentliche Hinrichtungen im Mittelalter. Doch heute, schreibt Stone, in der westlichen säkulären Gesellschaft, finde der Tod nur abgesondert hinter medizinischen und professionellen Fassaden oder aber als inszeniertes popkulturelles Ereignis statt. »Dark Tourism« hole den Tod zurück ins Leben, biete die Möglichkeit, sich mit dem Thema in sozial akzeptierter Weise zu befassen. Die Stätten erinnerten die Menschen an ihre eigene Vergänglichkeit, böten einen Ort der Besinnung, der Beschäftigung mit existenziellen und moralischen Fragen. Das mindere die Furcht vor dem unvermeidbaren Ende und schaffe so letztlich ein Gefühl von Sicherheit und Wohlbefinden, schließen Philip Stone und sein Kollege Richard Sharpley in einem Aufsatz.

Das Außergewöhnliche durchbricht das gewohnte Denken und Empfinden

Dass sich hinter dem Phänomen lediglich Voyeurismus verbergen könnte: Dafür hat auch Tourismusforscher Duncan Light von der Bournemouth University keine Hinweise gefunden. Nachdem er Forschungsarbeiten aus zwei Jahrzehnten wälzte, stellt er 2017 fest : »Die meisten Besucher der düsteren Schauplätze erklären, etwas über die Schattenseiten der Geschichte lernen und die Vergangenheit verstehen zu wollen. Einige fühlten sich dazu, anders als beim Besuch anderer Sehenswürdigkeiten, auch moralisch verpflichtet, wollten ihr Mitgefühl ausdrücken. Doch manchmal, schreibt Duncan Light, sei eine solche Gedenkstätte auch lediglich eine Station auf einer längeren Reise, die vor allem dem Vergnügen oder der Erholung diene, etwa im Rahmen einer geführten Tour, ein »Must-see«.

Da sich die wahren Motive von Menschen schwer erschließen lassen, erfassen einige Studien lediglich, was die Reisenden an düsteren Stätten denken, fühlen und tun. Manche von ihnen hinterlassen Blumen oder Botschaften, und die meisten fühlen sich nach eigener Auskunft tief berührt, erleben die Orte als verbindend und sinngebend, denken über moralische Fragen, ihre Werte und ihr Handeln nach. Das Außergewöhnliche eines solchen Orts durchbricht das gewohnte Denken und Empfinden, bietet Raum für tiefe Erfahrungen.

Und noch etwas ziehe Menschen an Orte mit leidvoller Geschichte, so schließt Duncan seine Diskussion möglicher Motive ab. Ein Reiseziel könne die eigene Identität festigen, das Selbstbild bestätigen oder ein gewünschtes Bild vermitteln, zum Beispiel, ein gebildeter, anteilnehmender Mensch zu sein. Einen Ort aufzusuchen, etwa Ground Zero, kann außerdem die kollektive Identität, das kollektive Gedächtnis bewahren.

Die meisten Menschen, glaubt Peter Hohenhaus, sind sich gar nicht bewusst, dass sie »Dark Tourism« betreiben und es einen Begriff dafür gibt. In der deutschen Wissenschaft findet das Phänomen bislang kaum Beachtung. Zu den wenigen Studien zählt die Abschlussarbeit der Wirtschaftspsychologin Katalina Ketschau von der Hochschule für Management in Berlin. Sie untersuchte tiefenpsychologische Motive für »Dark Tourism«. Bei den Recherchen sei sie auf Ablehnung und Unverständnis gestoßen, sagt Ketschau. »Wer das macht, ist doch psychisch gestört«, habe sie immer wieder gehört. Sie führte Tiefeninterviews mit sechs Menschen, die im vergangenen Jahr bewusst an einen düsteren Ort gereist waren. Ketschau schloss aus den Berichten: »Dark Tourism« integriere die Schattenseiten der menschlichen Existenz. In ihm zeige sich »die Unfähigkeit der postmodernen westlichen Gesellschaft, ihre Ängste und Schmerzen wahrzunehmen, ebenso wie ihre Sehnsucht danach«.

Vielleicht erklärt das auch, warum sich mancher an Gedenkstätten nicht angemessen verhält. Peter Hohenhaus findet es respektlos, »wenn Leute an Orten von dunkler Geschichte Fotos machen, als wären sie in Disneyland«. Besonders problematisch sei das bei jüngeren Katastrophen wie dem Feuer im Grenfell Tower in London. Als dort Schaulustige Selfies machten, erregte das viel Kritik. »Voyeurismus« nennt Hohenhaus das; »Slum-Tourismus« zählt er ebenfalls dazu. Vom respektlosen Verhalten einzelner Besucher dürfe man aber nicht auf die Mehrheit der »Dark Tourists« schließen: »Sie sind in aller Regel gut informiert und verhalten sich angemessen.« Er selbst will als Nächstes die ehemaligen Kolonialgefängnisse in Französisch-Guyana und das Museum des »Roten Terrors« in Äthiopien besuchen. Die Ziele werden ihm wohl nicht so schnell ausgehen. An guten Gründen fehlt es auch nicht.

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Wenn die Psyche leidet

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Dark tourism can be voyeuristic and exploitative – or if handled correctly, do a world of good

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Dark tourism is in vogue. It involves travel to sites associated with death, suffering and the seemingly macabre. Trips to former concentrations camps, sites of genocide, places of mass destruction, prisons and former battlefields are all part of the dark tourist’s controversial itinerary.

While not a new phenomenon – the Roman catacombs have been considered a “respectable” tourist spot for centuries – dark tourism has been increasingly popularised by glossy travel blogs and newspaper articles citing “must see” dark destinations. Key sites for visitors include Auschwitz-Birkenau, Tuol Sleng in Phenom Phen Cambodia, Ground Zero, Alcatraz and Robben Island. War kitsch sells.

My own dark tourism, which I undertook in a research capacity, was based in Northern Ireland, which has been no exception to the dark tourism trend. There, visitors can avail of multiple opportunities to delve into the sights, sounds and spaces of conflict.

A tourist in Belfast today will very likely opt to go on a “black taxi” tour around the city’s most troubled spots, a walking tour related to a specific atrocity such as Bloody Sunday, visit graves of republican volunteers in Milltown Cemetery or go to the Royal Ulster Constabulary George Cross Memorial Garden. The presence of the Titanic museum – a multi-million pound “experience” commemorating the construction and maiden voyage of the ship – further underscores the city and its visitors’ fascination with death and disaster.

I am very much alive to ethical concerns about voyeuristic attitudes to places of trauma and the commodification of suffering . But I also think that undertaking such tours offers an opportunity to honour the dead, to remember victims from all communities and to demonstrate a commitment to “never again”. Indeed, in a time of intense cultural, religious and political difference, it is hard to argue against the importance of learning lessons from past conflicts.

Yet, if dark tourism is to have a function beyond the macabre – and as it becomes an increasingly popular leisure activity and academic subject – there are some issues that demand our attention.

Victims and perpetrators

Dedicated tours or sites of dark tourism tend to concentrate on “the victims” and “the perpetrators” as distinct and exclusive categories. There are of course good reasons for doing so. For example, many victims and survivors feel that it is insensitive and a challenge to their sense of loss and victimhood to house or represent the accounts of both victims and perpetrators in the same space.

This debate has been well rehearsed in Northern Ireland, where in 2013, planning permission was granted to transform the site of the former Maze prison into an “International Centre for Conflict Transformation”. Amid political controversy and claims that allowing visitors access to former prison buildings, including the infamous “H-blocks” and prison hospital, would act as a shrine to and platform for the glorification of terrorism, the plans collapsed in late summer 2013.

In other cases, it would be inappropriate and wrong to feature the experience of those who committed violence at a site of mass atrocity.

Yet violent conflict is not black and white and the categories of victim and perpetrator are neither static or mutually exclusive. Packaging dark tourism around binary conceptualisations of victims and perpetrators is to take the easy exit route. It does little to complicate our understanding of the past or the messy reality of violent conflict.

Honesty about the past demands challenging easy and uncritical assumptions of innocence and guilt and the role that blame plays in political claims making. But handled sensitively, the architecture of dark tourism – the use of images, narrative trails and the physical landscape – provides an ideal medium through which to begin to address these thorniest of questions.

Whose voices?

Equally, there is an element of choice regarding which voices are articulated, which atrocities are highlighted and which particular spaces become key stops along the way.

Having participated in one tour which recounted the events of the Ballymurphy massacre in West Belfast and another which focused on the experience of members of the Protestant community who lived along the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland during the conflict, this point was starkly brought home to me.

In part, such tours serve as a potent reminder of the contest over space and the geographical intimacy of the Northern Ireland conflict. But there are inevitable tensions concerning which community memories are represented – and thereby legitimised – and which are marginalised or erased altogether. Competing and multi-layered memories are often reduced to one experience of history, one experience of victimhood and one interpretation of social memory.

Similar tensions exist regarding which particular victims’ voices are highlighted and which are silenced in the recounting of the past. In making that choice, it is frequently those voices which fit into and reinforce the underpinning politics of the tour and the relevant organisations’ broader perspective on the past which are highlighted. It is important to guard against the fetishisation of particular narratives and the use of victims’ voices for political gain.

We should not forget the past or let its horrors overwhelm the present. Rather, we must be alive to its complexities and contradictions. That means challenging our understanding of what victimhood and perpetratorhood mean, recognising the complexity of conflict, empowering victims and seeking to reflect on the reasons why individuals become involved in conflict.

Handled correctly, Northern Ireland’s sites of dark tourism can play a vital role in doing precisely this.

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Dark tourism: when tragedy meets tourism

The likes of Auschwitz, Ground Zero and Chernobyl are seeing increasing numbers of visitors, sparking the term 'dark tourism'. But is it voyeuristic or educational?

Days after 71 people died in a London tower block fire last June, something strange started to happen in the streets around it. Posters, hastily drawn by members of the grieving community of Grenfell Tower, appeared on fences and lamp posts in view of the building's blackened husk.

'Grenfell: A Tragedy Not A Tourist Attraction,' one read, adding — sarcastically — a hashtag and the word 'selfies'. As families still searched for missing inhabitants of the 24-storey block, and the political shock waves were being felt through the capital, people had started to arrive in North Kensington to take photos. Some were posing in selfie mode.

"It's not the Eiffel Tower," one resident told the BBC after the posters attracted the attention of the press. "You don't take a picture." Weeks later, local people were dismayed when a coachload of Chinese tourists pulled up nearby so that its occupants could get out and take photos.

Grenfell Tower, which still dominates the surrounding skyline (it's due to be demolished in late 2018), had become a site for 'dark tourism', a loose label for any sort of tourism that involves visiting places that owe their notoriety to death, disaster, an atrocity or what can also loosely be termed 'difficult heritage'.

It's a phenomenon that's on the rise as established sites such as Auschwitz and the September 11 museum in Manhattan enjoy record visitor numbers. Meanwhile, demand is rising among those more intrepid dark tourists who want to venture to the fallout zones of Chernobyl and Fukushima, as well as North Korea and Rwanda. In Sulawesi, Indonesia, Western tourists wielding GoPros pay to watch elaborate funeral ceremonies in the Toraja region, swapping notes afterwards on TripAdvisor.

Along the increasingly crowded dark-tourist trail, academics, tour operators and the residents of many destinations are asking searching questions about the ethics of modern tourism in an age of the selfie and the Instagram hashtag. When Pompeii, a dark tourist site long before the phrase existed, found itself on the Grand Tour of young European nobility in the 18th century, dozens of visitors scratched their names into its excavated walls. Now we leave our mark in different ways, but where should we draw the boundaries?

Questions like these have become the life's work of Dr Philip Stone , perhaps the world's leading academic expert on dark tourism. He has a background in business and marketing, and once managed a holiday camp in Scotland. But a fascination with societal attitudes to mortality led to a PhD in thanatology, the study of death, and a focus on tourism.

"I'm not even a person who enjoys going to these places," Stone says from the University of Central Lancashire, where he runs the Institute for Dark Tourism Research. "But what I am interested in is the way people face their own mortality by looking at other deaths of significance. Because we've become quite divorced from death yet we have this kind of packaging up of mortality in the visit economy which combines business, sociology, psychology under the banner of dark tourism. It's really fascinating to shine a light on that."

Historical roots

The term 'dark tourism' is far newer than the practice, which long predates Pompeii's emergence as a morbid attraction. Stone considers the Roman Colosseum to be one of the first dark tourist sites, where people travelled long distances to watch death as sport. Later, until the late 18th century, the appeal was starker still in central London, where people paid money to sit in grandstands to watch mass executions. Hawkers would sell pies at the site, which was roughly where Marble Arch   stands today.

It was only in 1996 that 'dark tourism' entered the scholarly lexicon when two academics in Glasgow applied it while looking at sites associated with the assassination of JFK. Those who study dark tourism identify plenty of reasons for the growing phenomenon, including raised awareness of it as an identifiable thing. Access to sites has also improved with the advent of cheap air travel. It's hard to imagine that the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial and museum would now welcome more than two million visitors a year (an average of almost 5,500 a day, more than two-thirds of whom travel to the Polish site from other countries in Europe) were it not for its proximity to Krakow's international airport.

Peter Hohenhaus, a widely travelled dark tourist based in Vienna, also points to the broader rise in off-the-beaten track tourism, beyond the territory of popular guidebooks and TripAdvisor rankings. "A lot of people don't want mainstream tourism and that often means engaging with places that have a more recent history than, say, a Roman ruin," he says. "You go to Sarajevo and most people remember the war being in the news so it feels closer to one's own biography."

Hohenhaus is also a fan of 'beauty in decay', the contemporary cultural movement in which urban ruins have become subject matter for expensive coffee-table books and a thousand Instagram accounts. The crossover with death is clear. "I've always been drawn to derelict things," the 54-year-old says. As a child in Hamburg, he would wonder at the destruction of war still visible around the city's harbour.

That childhood interest has developed into an obsession; Hohenhaus has visited 650 dark tourist sites in 90 countries, logging them all and more besides on his website . He has plans to put together the first dark tourism guidebook. His favourite holiday destination today is Chernobyl and its 'photogenic' ghost town. "You get to time travel back into the Soviet era but also into an apocalyptic future," he says. He also enjoys being emotionally challenged by these places. "I went to Treblinka in 2008 and heard the story of a teacher at an orphanage in Warsaw who was offered a chance to escape but refused and went with his children to the gas chambers. Stories like that are not everyday, you mull over them. Would you have done that?"

But while, like any tourism, dark tourism at its best is thought-provoking and educational, the example of Grenfell Tower hints at the unease felt at some sites about what can look like macabre voyeurism. "I remember the Lonely Planet Bluelist book had a chapter about dark tourism a while ago and one of the rules was 'don't go back too early'," Hohenhaus says. "But that's easier said than calculated. You have to be very aware of reactions and be discreet when you're not in a place with an entrance fee and a booklet." Hohenhaus said he had already thought about Grenfell Tower and admits he would be interested to see it up close. "It's big, it's dramatic, it's black and it's a story you've followed in the news," he says. "I can see the attraction. But I would not stand in the street taking a selfie."

A mirror to mortality

An urge to see and feel a place that has been reduced to disaster shorthand by months of media coverage is perhaps understandable, but Stone is most interested in the draw — conscious or otherwise — of destinations that hold up a mirror to our own mortality. "When we touch the memory of people who've gone what we're looking at is ourselves," he says. "That could have been us in that bombing or atrocity. We make relevant our own mortality." That process looks different across cultures — and generations — and Stone says we should take this into account before despairing of selfie takers at Grenfell Tower or Auschwitz.

"I've heard residents at Grenfell welcoming visitors because it keeps the disaster in the public realm, but they didn't like people taking photos because it's a visual reminder that you're a tourist and therefore somehow defunct of morality," he explains. "We're starting to look at selfies now. Are they selfish?" Stone argues that the language of social media means we no longer say "I was here", but "I am here — see me". He adds: "We live in a secular society where morality guidelines are increasingly blurred. It's easy for us to say that's right or wrong, but for many people it's not as simple as that."

"Travel itself is innately voyeuristic," argues Simon Cockerel, the general manager of Koryo Tours , a North Korea specialist based in Beijing. Cockerel, who has lived in China for 17 years and joined Koryo in 2002, says demand has grown dramatically for trips to Pyongyang and beyond, from 200 people a year in the mid 1990s, when the company started, to more than 5,000 more recently. He has visited the country more than 165 times and says some clients join his tours simply to bag another country, and some for bragging rights. But the majority have a genuine interest in discovering a country — and a people — beyond the headlines.

"I've found everyone who goes there to be sensitive and aware of the issues," he says. "The restrictions do create a framework for it to be a bit like a theme park visit but we work hard to blur those boundaries. More than 25 million people live in North Korea, and 24.99 million of them have nothing to do with what we read in the news and deserve to be seen as people not as zoo animals or lazy caricatures."

More challenging recently has been the US ban on its citizens going to North Korea, imposed last summer after the mysterious death of Otto Warmbier. The American student had been arrested in Pyongyang after being accused of trying to steal a propaganda poster. Americans made up about 20% of Koryo's business, but Cockerel argues the greater loss is to mutual perception in the countries. "The North Korean government represent Americans as literal wolves with sharpened nails," he says. "At least a few hundred Americans going there was a kind of bridgehead against that. Now that's gone."

At Grenfell Tower, responsible tourism may yet serve to keep alive the memory of the disaster, just as it does, after a dignified moratorium, at Auschwitz and the former Ground Zero. Hohenhaus says he will resist the urge to go until some sort of memorial is placed at the site of the tower. At around the time of a commemorative service at St Paul's Cathedral six months after the fire, there were calls for the site eventually to be turned into a memorial garden. The extent to which Hohenhaus and other dark tourists are welcomed will be decided by the people still living there.

Five of the world's dark tourism sites

1. North Korea Opened to visitors in the late 1980s, North Korea now attracts thousands of tourists each year for a peek behind the headlines.

2. Auschwitz-Birkenau The former Nazi death camp became a memorial in 1947 and a museum in 1955. It's grown since and in 2016 attracted a record two million visitors.

3. 9/11 Memorial and Museum Built in the crater left by the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the museum, opened in 2014, has won plaudits for its portrayal of a disaster and its impact.

4. Rwanda Visitor numbers to genocide memorials have grown in Cambodia and Bosnia as well as in Rwanda, where there are several sites dedicated to the 1994 massacre of up to a million people. The skulls of victims are displayed.

5. Chernobyl & Pripyat, Ukraine Several tour companies exist to send visitors to the exclusion zone and ghost town left otherwise empty after the nuclear accident in 1986. All are scanned for radiation as they leave.

Published in the March 2018 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK)

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Basic information

• Admission to the grounds of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial is free of charge. The entry cards should be reserved on  visit.auschwitz.org . For better understanding the history of Auschwitz we suggest a visit with a guide-educator

• The fees are charged for  engaging a guide-educator . Visitors in groups are required to engage an Auschwitz Memorial guide. There is also possibility for individual visitors to join a guided tour .  

• The Museum  also  organizes  online guided tours   for groups and individual visitors .

• Due to overwhelming demand, please book in advance and arrive at the Memorial at least 30 minutes before the start of the tour due to security checks. The main car park and entrance to the Museum is located at 55 Więźniów Oświęcimia Street .

• Visitors to the grounds of the Museum should behave with due solemnity and respect. Visitors are obliged to dress in a manner befitting a place of this nature. Before the visit please read " the rules for visiting ".

• The grounds and buildings of the Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau camps are open to visitors. The duration of a visit is determined solely by the individual interests and needs of the visitors. As a minimum, however, at least three-and-a-half hours should be reserved.

• The maximum size of backpacks or handbags brought into the Museum can not exceed dimensions: 35x25x15 cm . Please leave your bags in your cars or buses.

Read more...

Multibook - preparing for a visit to the Memorial Site

DEUTSCH   |  ESPAÑOL   |   FRANÇAIS   |   ITALIANO  

Multibook is also available in I nternational Sign language

Guided Tours for Individual Visitors

Individual visitors may tour the Memorial independently or in organised groups with a guide.

Entrance to the Museum, to both Auschwitz I and Birkenau parts, is possible only with a personalized entry pass booked in advance. Reservations can be made at visit.auschwitz.org or on the spot at the cashier. The number of entry passes available is limited.

Due to the huge interest, visitors are kindly requested to book in advance at the website visit.auschwitz.org, as well as to arrive at least 30 minutes before the start of the tour. Larger luggage should be left in vehicles in the car park. Before the visit, please read the rules of visiting and the opening hours of the Museum.

HOURS OF THE VISIT CAN BE RESERVED ONLINE: VISIT.AUSCHWITZ.ORG

Online guided tours

The online guided tour lasts about two hours and is divided into two parts – in Auschwitz I and Birkenau. The guide's narration is conducted live. Additionally, the educator uses multimedia materials, archival photographs, artistic works, documents, and testimonies of Survivors. Interaction with the guide and asking questions is also possible. 

GROUPS / SCHOOLS

The tour for groups is available in 7 languages (English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Polish, and Spanish). Bookings can be made after logging in via a form available on visit.auschwitz.org .

TOURS FOR INDIVIDUAL VISITORS

Individual visitors can join guided tours starting at set times of the day in English, German and Polish.  Entry cards are available at visit.auschwitz.org .

Check the hours of online guided tours for individual visitors . 

Learn more about "Auschwitz in Front of Your Eyes" platform.

Guided tours options. Prices.

We offer visitors several options for guided tours. Each includes tours of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau.

• General tours (2,5 h) • General tours (3,5 h) • Guided tours for individual visitors (3,5 h) • One-day study tours (6 h) • Two-day study tours (2x3 h) • Online tour (2 h)

Because of a large number of visitors guides should be reserved at least two months before a planned visit.

Plan a visit

In order to take in the grounds and exhibitions in a suitable way, visitors should set aside a minimum of about 90 minutes for the Auschwitz site and the same amount of time for Auschwitz II-Birkenau. It is essential to visit both parts of the camp, Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau, in order to acquire a proper sense of the place that has become the symbol of the Holocaust of the European Jews as well as Nazi crimes againt Poles, Romas and other groups.

The grounds and most of the buildings at the sites of the Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau sites are open to visitors. Some buildings are not accessible to visitors (including the blocks reserved for the Museum administration and its departments). Please familiarize yourself with " the rules for visiting ".

Opening hours

The Museum is open all year long, seven days a week, except January 1, December 25, and Easter Sunday. You can start the visit in the following hours*:

• 7:30 AM - 2:00 PM December
• 7:30 AM - 3:00 PM January, November
• 7:30 AM - 4:00 PM February
• 7:30 AM - 5:00 PM March, October
• 7:30 AM - 6:00 PM April, May, September
• 7:30 AM - 7:00 PM June, July, August

* These are the hours of entrance to the Museum. A visitor may stay on the site of the Museum 90 minutes after the last entrance hour (i.e. 5.30 in February or 8.30 in July) 

"Reserve" buildings available for the visitors

Study tour groups may visit Block 2 and 3 of the former Auschwitz I camp and wooden hospital barracks (B-80 and B-210) at the Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp. Block 2 and 3 are ones of so-called "reserve blocks" of the Museum, maintained and presented in their original condition. Since the liberation of the camp, the interior of the blocks has been preserved almost intact. It comprises rooms for prisoners, a washroom, toilets and other areas, furnished with original strawbeds, bunks and other elements of block furnishing. 

Getting to the Museum

The Museum is located on the outskirts of the city of Oświęcim on provincial road 933. The visit starts at the former Auschwitz I site. The Museum is about 2 km. from the train station and can be reached from there by local buses. (GPS coordinates: GPS coordinates: 19.20363 E, 50.0266 N )

There are PKS and minibus stops adjacent to the Museum, with service to Cracow and Katowice. There are also two international airports within about 50 kilometers of Oświęcim: Kraków-Balice and Katowice-Pyrzowice.

More information for visitors (i.e. transport, weather)

Temporarily closed for visitors

Closed for the visitors:

• parts of the Auschwitz II-Birkenau

• part of the exhibition in Block 5 in Auschwitz I

• the Russian exhibition in Block 14

• the so-called Central Sauna building in Auschwitz II-Birkenau

• the Slovak exhibition in Block 16

• the French exhibition in Block 20

• the exhibition in Block 13 on 27.08 - 9.10.2024 and 03.03.2025 – 30.04.2025

• Austrian exhibition of block 17 in Auschwitz I on 16-17.09.2024

• via @auschwitzmuseum" aria-label="Udostępnij na Twitter">

Images from www.auschwitz.org may be used only in publications relating to the history of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau or the activities of the Auschwitz Memorial. Their use must not tarnish the good reputation of the victims of KL Auschwitz. Any interference in the integrity of the images – including cropping or graphic processing – is prohibited. The use of the images for commercial purposes requires the Museum’s approval and information about the publication. Publishers undertake to indicate the authors and origin of the images: www.auschwitz.org, as well as to inform the Museum of the use of the images ([email protected]).