I found this article interesting.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...toryID=6820027

It's about the historian Iris Cheng who recently committed suicide. The horrors of her research into atrocities in Asia during the pre-WWII and WWII period may be related, although that's obviously not the full story. That's Asia, of course, but the article also mentions two historians of European history, Raul Hilberg who chronicled the Holocaust and Robert Conquest who studied Stalin's terrors. Both admit to having been brought low from time to time by their work.

I can't say it does any good for anyone, but I have a slight feeling of what they mean. So many of the most memorable sights in Europe are also the bloodiest and most horrible. For example, I really liked Berlin in so many ways, but the horror it represented is of course impossible to fathom. Or on a much lesser scale, as the humorous Beefeater speaks in the Tower of London, all the while you can think of the ghastly deaths of innocents that occurred there.

At the same time, it seems a waste of an expensive trip to be depressed by such things, and it's not necessarily demonstrative of a noble spirit.

So how do you deal with this? If you visit a terrible sight, are you able to go on your way happily shopping and eating five minutes later? What's the proper balance to strike to still be respectful of the dead?

I take the fact that the site is allowed to be visited and the history to be told as a sign of better days, of wiser days. That is what I take with me.

These sobering sites fill me with sadness but also with humility, gratitude (for when and where I live) and resolve not to participate in such madness.

Time insulates us from history's horrors but the horror of poverty -- for example, when visiting the third world -- is something we CAN do something about.

Be generous when you see people in need.

When I go to the third world, I plan/budget (before I go) to do something for others when I am there.

I understand the post up until the last sentence. In this sentence, you imply that visiting a concentration camp (for example) and then going out for a drink or shopping is disrespectful to those who suffered in the camp. i don't think there is any period in which people should feel compelled to "mourn" after visiting a certain place.

each person is affected in his or her own way and will behave as such. Of course one should adapt the correct tone while at the site itself in order not to disturb others.

as for spending an expensive vacation viewing "depressing" sites, this is again a personal choice. for myself, i travel to have fun and to learn and experience new things. visiting dark sites effects me during and long after the trip. i will often think of these places. Maybe much later i will read more about the history of the site and be effected more because i had visited it in the past.


this also goes for places with poor living conditions where the issue is not just historical but in the "here and now".

WillTravel, what a thought-provoking thread. You mentioned Hilberg and Conquest as two others writers who were affected by their research. I'd add one more: Lieutenant-General Rom&eacute;o Dallaire, who led the UN peacekeeping mission to Rwanda in 1994. He witnessed the slaughter of 800,000 Hutus and subsequently wrote <i>Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda.</i> He continues to be deeply troubled by his memories.

As for personal experience, I found myself extremely unsettled by the recollection of the Albigensian Crusade when we visited Languedoc in 2001. The village of Minerve, for example, which would otherwise be a simple and sleepy place, seemed alive with images of a brutal seige and the subsequent slaughter of Cathar Perfects.

While I find these feelings unsettling, I guess I see it as continuing education. I certainly don't intend to stop--I'd like to visit some of the Great War battle sites and some of the WWII concentration camps.

Anselm

I've not read the article yet, WillTravel, but it's Iris Chang (I think), by the way. Small difference.

She was researching the Bataan Death March when she committed suicide. It's a very sad story. Reputedly she was quite depressed while doing this research. Apparently she took her job very seriously, even when she was a journalism student. I read that a professor recalled having her a student and watching her sob while she described her experiences working with an AIDS patient.

I've not read her book on the Nanjing/Nanking Massacre -- it's a sad period of history that has been overlooked by the Japanese (supposedly), who committed war crimes that were truly atrocious during the Second World War.

Anyway, this is somewhat tangential, but I did want to offer a couple of thoughts on Iris Chang.

Can you actually NAME ANY major city, and many minor ones, in Europe where something &quot;monstrous&quot; didn't happen at one time or another what with all the religious, political, etc., wars and conflicts along with plagues, epidemics, poisonings, etc., etc.

I can see why extensive research into such could easily bring down anyone for a while until they make their way to the nearest gelato stand or high-end shopping opportunity for much-needed relief!

Your post somehow brings that famous Harry Lime quote to mind (from &quot;The Third Man,&quot; set in postwar Vienna):

&quot;Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly.&quot;

Source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041959/quotes

Every tribe/culture/nation-state will commit whatever atrocities advance its notion of selfhood. Vikings, Huns, Brits, Americans, Bolsheviks, Nazis - no exceptions.

What is the most troubling to me is the ease with which a people will blindly follow its leadership into the abyss. The Greeks had a word: <i>hubris</i>.

By the way, it's interesting that Berlin is mentioned. The Holocaust Memorial was being built while I was there, and it was very near the Brandenburg Tor and also near Potsdamer Platz. It'd be impossible to miss this memorial, full of concrete slabs meant to symbolize tombs, once it's complete.

Whereas one can choose not to visit a concentration camp, it's difficult to avoid seeing this memorial unless you're really trying hard, I think. And maybe that's the point.