Description
Encountering Nazi Tourism Sites explores how the terrible legacy of Nazi criminality is experienced by tourists, bridging the gap between cultural criminology and tourism studies to make a significant contribution to our understanding of how Nazi criminality is evoked and invoked in the landscape of modern Germany.
This study is grounded in fieldwork encounters with memorials, museums and perpetrator sites across Germany and the Netherlands, including Berlin Holocaust memorials and museums, the Anne Frank House, the Wannsee House, Wewelsburg Castle and concentration camps. At the core of this research is a respect for each site’s unique physical, architectural or curatorial form and how this enables insights into different aspects of the Holocaust. Chapters grapple with themes of authenticity, empathy, voyeurism and vicarious experience to better comprehend the possibilities and limits of affective encounters at these sites.
This will be of great interest to upper level students and researchers of criminology, Holocaust studies, museology, tourism studies, memorialisation studies and the burgeoning field of ‘difficult’ heritage.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Surveying the Holocaust tourism memorial field in Germany. 1 Profane splendour: the Wannsee House. 2 The Topography of Terror: the foundations of Nazi rule. 3 Wewelsburg Castle: against an SS phantasia 4 The Anne Frank House/Museum. 5 Concentration camp tourism in Germany: two encounters 6 The Jewish Museum Berlin: encountering trauma. 7 Berlin Holocaust memorials: marking past atrocity in the space of the city Conclusion: Nazi crime-related tourism in contemporary Germany
