A Search for Authenticity:

Telling the Truth about through

Daniel Reynolds Grinnell College

Origins of Tourism

• Pilgrimage

• Commerce

• Education and Research Part I Tourism - Some Definitions • Daniel Boorstin, The Image (1964): – Pseudo-events, Superficial engagement with attractions, Knowledge replaced with Image, Tourist v. Traveler (Split in 19th Century) • Dean MacCannell – A way of overcoming the discontinuity of modernity, of incorporating its fragments into unified experience • Dennison Nash – Travelers at leisure, encounger between tourist and native • John Urry – The Tourist Gaze “They are tourists, I am not.”

David Brown, “Genuine Fakes.” The Tourist Image: Myths and Myth-making in Tourism. New York: John Wiley, 1996. New Modalities of Tourism

• • • Service Tourism • – Sites of death and disaster – Sites already heavily circulated in media “Holocaust Tourism”??

• G.J. Ashworth – – Related to Heritage toursim – Transgenerational identification with victimhood • Griselda Pollock – The touristic is transient; fails to distinguish “place” from “event” • James E Young – Unwitting consumers of exhibits as reality • Tim Cole – Theme Park, “Auschwitzland” Destinations and Visitors 2017 • Berlin’s Denkmal an die ermordeten Juden Europas (Information Center) – 470,000 • Yad Vashem – 925,000 • United States Holocaust Memorial Museum – 1,600,000 • Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum – 2,100,000 Visitors over Time

2500000

2000000

1500000 Berlin

Yad Vashem 1000000 USHMM

500000 Auschwitz- Birkenau 0 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 2017 Tourism and Witnessing

Spatial proximity vs. Temporal distance

Event v. Representation “Staged Authenticity” (MacCannell)

Pilgrimage v. Tourism Part II Case studies: The Memorials

Auschwitz/Birkenau Chełmno Bełżec Sobibór Operation Reinhard Treblinka Majdanek What’s left to see?

Chełmno (Kulmhof) Birkenau – “Tor des Todes” und “Judenrampe” Sobibór 2010 Sobibór – “Himmelstrasse” Sobibór - Mausoleum Photography and Authenticity

Auschwitz, January 1945 Still image from footage taken by Red Army upon liberation Warsaw Ghetto, May 1943 Hersz Jakubowicz, prisoner no. 24224 Yad Vashem Photo Archive Auschwitz kitchen Photo taken 2007 Treblinka Photo taken 2011 Auschwitz, January 1945 Still image from footage taken by Red Army upon liberation Birkenau near Crematoria IV and V Photo on sign taken by SS, 1944 The Reverse Gaze (Alex Gillespie, 2006): “When the Photographee stares back at the Photographer.” “[…] a discrepancy between Self’s image of Self and Self’s image of how Other perceives Self” Part IIII: Present Day Concerns

• Tourism and the behavior of visitors • Politicizing tourism to serve national agendas • Deniers “I’m famous, y’all!” June 20, 2014 USA Today, July 23 2014 Images for sale Part III Tourism and the Political Landscape Liberation, Cold War

Image courtesy of USHMM.org Missing or Erroneous Memory

Birkenau Memorial, 1967 and 1990 “2 steps forward…” “2 step forward…” Jan Karski