Mencius Moldbugman

Ostensibly it is possible to visit Auschwitz for free, but in reality it is practically impossible. Free tickets are only sold before 10am and after 4pm and are most often “sold-out”. Most people enter the gates alongside a huge tour group and an audio guide.

On arrival at Auschwitz you’ll see a barrage of gift shops, bookstores, cafes and money exchanges all at inflated prices. This is the most obvious sign of the industry that has grown around the Holocaust. Even the toilets charge 2 zloty a go. It’s Disneyland with ovens.

Upon entry, there is no chance for reflection. Every inch of the complex is covered in sprawling tour groups, herded through the corridors by bored tour guides like cattle. In this way the modern experience at least evokes the original atmosphere of the camp.

Personally I don’t have too much issue with all of the above. Even a site like Auschwitz has operating costs that have to be covered, despite all the NGO money that undoubtedly floods into it. What I found more interesting was the attitude of the tourists who visit.

Honestly speaking, it is a rather boring day out. It involves a lot of slow walking through open fields and narrow corridors listening to dreary translated Polish and bumping into other tour groups. The facts are nothing that anyone hasn’t heard before. Yet that isn’t the point.

It’s almost as if the Auschwitz experience is meant to be as tedious as possible to build up the sense of virtue within the visitors making the pilgrimage. And I don’t use the word “pilgrimage” lightly: for Auschwitz very much is where a new religion was born.

I predict that if my fellow tourists were to tell the truth, they’d admit to having more fun downing vodka shots in Krakow with their compatriots. Fun isn’t the point though. The Auschwitz visitors are “better” than the stag parties and this sense of moral superiority is the goal

The more tedious the better. The more money spent the better. It is morally superior to spend $30 looking at blank metal jaildoors than on drinking vodka shots. Auschwitz is Mecca. Auschwitz is the old Christian pilgrimages of Europe. It’s the birthplace of our modern religion.