Sad places you've been too

bigbob said:
Don't get me wrong, those places listed are truly horrible and I am not belittling your experiences but what does visiting somewhere that has happened in history bring to your understanding of the event. If you read about it and have watched documentaries, you must be able to understand the event and what happened to those people without having to see the actual field or camp? Maybe not, but I would not travel a long way to go to somewhere like that when I have read / seen stuff about it already and understood the evil that has occurred.
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I think for me with travelling around the WW1 and WWII sites it was scale that I don't think I appreciated from watching things/ reading. Similarly with Auswitz I think.

I have never planned a trip to go only to a place where something has happened, but planned within trips to see these things and the scale of what I have seen has enriched my understanding I think.
 
bigbob said:
Don't get me wrong, those places listed are truly horrible and I am not belittling your experiences but what does visiting somewhere that has happened in history bring to your understanding of the event. If you read about it and have watched documentaries, you must be able to understand the event and what happened to those people without having to see the actual field or camp? Maybe not, but I would not travel a long way to go to somewhere like that when I have read / seen stuff about it already and understood the evil that has occurred.
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I studied the Holocaust at length and did an extended piece on a book called Hitler's willing executioners as part of a History A-Level but nothing prepared me for how vast, bleak and cold Auschwitz-Birkenau was. There was two foot of snow on the ground as well.
 
There's a little memorial garden near me, laid out around the mine shaft of the Hartley Pit Disaster. In January 1862, 204 men and boys, aged from 10 to 72, were in the mine or in the lift (it was early in the morning, shift change time) when the massive beam holding the lift and the engine snapped. All 46 tons of it hurtled down the shaft, trapping the mangled mess of the cage in the shaft and cutting off any means of rescue.

The frantic villagers - including the few miners left who weren't trapped down there - spent weeks digging a second rescue shaft...but all was in vain. When they finally gained access, they found every single one dead from breathing in the poisonous fumes. But they also found on the bodies scribbled notes, detailing prayer meetings and makeshift services for their mates as they perished - until there was no one left to pray. Their hand written notes are now on the wall of Woodhorn Colliery Museum near Ashington.

Working with the current villagers, my mates designed and laid the stones in the garden. It's so moving to walk around the wee space and take in the impact of what was then a national disaster but is now virtually forgotten...

Hester Pit Memorial Garden | Co-Curate

co-curate.ncl.ac.uk
 
Colin Warnek said:
Tuol Sleng and the Killing Fields.

Places you should do once for your own knowledge of society- but I have absolutely no desire to go again for obvious reasons.
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These two places for me. The pile of skulls will live with me forever and the tree as mentioned below.
 
bigbob said:
Don't get me wrong, those places listed are truly horrible and I am not belittling your experiences but what does visiting somewhere that has happened in history bring to your understanding of the event. If you read about it and have watched documentaries, you must be able to understand the event and what happened to those people without having to see the actual field or camp? Maybe not, but I would not travel a long way to go to somewhere like that when I have read / seen stuff about it already and understood the evil that has occurred.
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It helps you visualise things on a way you can't from books and movies. It's an experience being at the place such an event occurred. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't take a holiday to go to these places but if they are nearby I'll definitely check them out. It's fascinating being in places touched by history. For example I have lately read about the massacre in Oradour sur Glane and I find it much better when I can actually visualise the streets. Have stood in the courtyard where the women and children were gunned down. They rounded the women and children in to the church and stood outside with machine guns. They then set fire to the back of the church. So everyone's choice was stay in the church and be burnt alive or run out of the front door and be shot.

I honestly think I can understand what happened better there by walking down the streets.

Plus, if you ever find yourself in Limoges, you'll run out of things to do in 5 minutes so you might as well visit!
 
Never been to Auschwitz / Birkenau, did tentatively mention it to Mrs Gnome some years ago but got VERY short shrift.

Been to the Lutyens Thiepval memorial to 72,337 missing British and South African servicemen who died in the Battles of the Somme of the First World War between 1915 and 1918, with no known grave. (Wiki). Also called in at Hawthorn Ridge, still see the trenches and the guns, shell casings and the barbed wire (we were there in 1989).

Used to go to a village on holiday (place called Cherveix Cubas) not too far off the road to Oradour, but once again Mrs Gnome would have none of it. Oddly enough probably didn't need to, we were in the bar (where else?) and were talking to the boss and we asked him about a memorial just outside the village "A NOS ENFANTS VICTIMES DE LA BARBARIE ALLEMANDE". He pointed us to an old gadge standing with his drink at the end of the bar. And he told us a story. After D-Day the Germans were heading up to Normandy and they were ambushed by the Resistance just outside the village. They came back went round the houses and got all the adults out, took them out, put them up against a small cliff face and shot them, made the kids watch. Then they set fire to their houses. This guy had been made to watch while his dad was machine gunned. Then he started to cry. Just said "They killed my father", put his unfinished drink down and left. Sometimes you don't need big memorials.

Edit - I know that memorial has been moved because of a road improvement but I can't find it at all now on google street view.

On a slightly lighter note a few years later we were driving to Venice (Mrs Gnome pregnant plus a 4 year old and a one year old, yeah, I know, I deserved it) and we stopped to camp at a pretty little place called Lindau which is just inside Germany, only about 100 yds from the Austrian border on the Bodensee, overlooking the Swiss Alps. There'd been a Harley Davison convention in Munich and a Brit couple were there with their bike on the way home. He said to me "Do you know anything about this camp site?" Only where it is. "You see the water tap thing?" It was a big circular stone trough with water taps in a ring about head height. "We've just been to Dachau and they've got those there, just the same" When we got back home (it was the days before the web) looked it up. It had been a satellite concentration camp for Dachau apparently, but can't find a reference for it for some reason. Made us wonder if the shower block had been repurposed.
 
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Visited Dachau a few years back when we went to Munich. Despite being well aware of the history and prepared to show all due respect to the place, the briefing the tour guide gave us before we went in really hit home. All German school kids have to visit a concentration camp as part of their education. (Not that I would) but you aren’t allowed to take selfies in the camp. The final point was that the whole site is basically a cemetery and to remember to show respect to that.

I can’t imagine there are many things in the world more sobering than standing inside a gas chamber.
 
Auschwitz/Birkenau.
Also the crypt at the church of St. Cyril & Methodious in Prague where the Czech paratroopers hid after the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich.
My own personal sadness was visiting my uncles war grave in Austria (found it sadly after my dad had died).Shed a few tears when I seen my grandparents names in the remembrance book.
 
changingman said:
Probably this place - https://www.google.com/maps/place/T...x6078dca7f1e0bacd!8m2!3d56.958145!4d24.124124

My wife and I turned up for an English language tour and were the only two people present. The guide was an ex prison warder. Fascinating and terrifying in equal measure (the place, not the guide).
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AH I saw that place when I was in Riga. Wish I had gone in!

Not a sad place at all but the KGB link reminded me of it. There is a hotel in Talinn where westerners went during the USSR days. You can do a tour up to all the spying equipment. The things is diplomats knew they were being spied upon and started using it to their advantage. The Soviet union was trying to pretend it was more opulent then the west so guests would say things to colleagues like "These pillows are rubbish" the KGB would then get new pillows sent to them, despite them not "asking" for it.
 
BoroFur said:
Probably the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam but I've also been to see the Shoes on the Danube.

I must go to Auschwitz at some point in the next few years.
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Another shout for the Anne Frank House. Many people were in tears.... including several German families.

The War Cemetary at Sfax in Tunisia. Kept prisitine by the caretaker and walking along the rows of gravestones the age of those young men that died so far away from home and their loved ones. An green oasis set amongst one of the most godforsaken dumps I've ever had the misfortune to visit.
 
I visited the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane and thought this was the most upsetting place I had visited until I went to Auschwitz - Birkenau. We took a group of year 11 history students and at some point we all had a tear in out eyes.

It is a place everyone should visit once, but I wouldn't go again.

I have put a link below to Oradour-sur-Glane.


Oradour-sur-Glane, 10 June 1944

The SS Division Das Reich, destroyed the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane and today it is preserved In a Ruined State.
www.oradour.info www.oradour.info
 
Auschwitz.jpg
I remember standing there for fully 15 minutes trying to comprehend what was going through the minds of both sides when people got off the train. It was impossible to get your head around it. I left with tears streaming down my face.
AND SOME PEOPLE THINK IT NEVER HAPPENED! (b***ds!)
 
A ghost town in California called Calico.

I don't know why particularly, it just reflected a whole different life in a different time. Lots of silver miners arrived, some tried to raise families, some died and they all left.

Most people just speed by going from LA to Las Vegas and don't give it a thought.
 
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