Places of Pain and Shame

I spent yesterday in a very long but equally interesting seminar on the heritage of ‘places of pain and shame’. There is book of case studies to be published next year and the seminar was a chance for the authors to test their ideas out on each other and anyone else interested in listening.

It is one of the most challenging areas of heritage practice and heritage theory. What do we do with sites of pain and shame? and how do we do it? How do we we satisfy the needs of both global and local audiences and respect the memory of those who have dies at these sites?

Two examples are Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland and Toul Sleng in Cambodia, these are sites of death, mass murder and torture, and they are also two of the biggest tourist attractions in their respective countries.

These sites are retained for people to see them. To remember. But reconciling that with the busload of tourists who stream through the gates is difficult. The prisoner reception building at Auschwitz is now the visitor reception centre complete with ticket book, kiosk and toilets centre. Is that respecting the memories of the people whose lives were decided in that place? Or doesn’t it matter as long as the people who visit Auchwitz-Birkenau leave with a better understanding of what happened there?

And what of the people who live on the boundary of Auschwitz? The local community who have to live out their daily lives under the scrutiny of the international community, ready to judge new development as disrespectful, no matter how necessary to the town’s survival. Or the squatters on the grounds of Toul Sleng, who have no money, no land, no place to live and no way out of a devastating poverty cycle and now find themselves living on the grounds where many, many people were imprisoned and killed.

I don’t know what the answers to these questions are, but I do know that in spite of the challenges of presenting these sites to the masses, of the desire to forget or move on, retaining these sites is essential for reminding all people how easily violence on this scale can take place and how easily the world can turn a blind eye to it.