New episode NIOD Rewind podcast
Published on 23 September 2024
How has American tourism to Nazi concentration camps influenced the ways in which people remember the Holocaust and Nazi atrocities? In this episode, Anne van Mourik (NIOD) sits down with Leonie Werle (Freie Universität Berlin) to explore this question.
As early as 1948, American tourists started to visit German concentration camps, with magazines even promoting Germany as the land of ‘Bach and Belsen’. What did this early postwar tourism to the camps look like? Is it a form of dark tourism? Why were the camps often experienced as disappointing by American tourists? And why do people so often compare the Holocaust and concentration camps to present-day events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic or other crises?
Anne van Mourik (right) interviewing Leonie Werle (left) about early American tourism to Nazi concentration camps