(From Max My Money): Some experiences are so emotionally heavy that they're best left in the past. One commenter advises against revisiting Auschwitz in Poland, despite it being an educational and historical experience. The toll it takes on a person's emotions is not to be taken lightly, with the commenter describing the visit as haunting and something they never want to relive.
I decided not to visit Auschwitz, Dachau or Birkenau. Why?
I visited Dealy Plaza and the Texas Book Depository some years ago when I was in Dallas for the NCAA Final Four and a Springsteen concert. It was such an emotional visit, I decided these places should not be on my travel radar.
I could not visit the death camps, nor could I visit the MLK Memorial at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. But I did visit Ebeneezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and could feel the spirit on the great man.
Riding on the Trans-Siberian Railway was equally disturbing, knowing that prisoners were forced to walk the Trans-Siberian "highway" on their way to prison (death) camps. Of course, I saw several former prisons along the way, though none are denoted in travel guides or maps.
I also do not enjoy visiting Presidential Libraries. I have been to the Kennedy, Carter, and Reagan Libraries. But I would be curious to visit Obama's once it is open.
Even crossing into East Berlin through the Berlin Wall was a highly emotional experience. It will remain one of the most significant travel experiences of my life. They strip searched the cute hippie girl who crossed Checkpoint Charlie with me! The old blue VW van in the photo is how we got to the Wall.
In fact, a walking tour a few years ago through Berlin made a stop at the place where Hitler and Eva Braun killed themselves. It was an awful feeling, even though they were probably the two most awful and notorious people in history.
Then there was 9-11. For over a decade it looked like the survivors, politicians, and others who had vowed to create this museum might not actually have the ability to look back at that world-changing September day. Bickering over every element of the design and contents of the museum caused endless delays and became newspaper fodder; controversies seemed to erupt daily over such issues as the high cost of entry to the museum, its portrayal of the Muslim religion, even the fact that it had a gift shop.
Yet despite all this, the 9/11 Museum has emerged as what may be one of the most important history museums in the United States. Out of all the chaos and well-publicized postponements comes an institution that seamlessly blends design and content, transporting visitors back, in a very visceral way, to the day in which four separate, airplane-fueled attacks killed close to the 3,000 people (the museum relates the stories not just of the Twin Towers, but also of the Pentagon attack and Flight 93).I will be in NYC on 9/11, for totally unrelated reasons. I have seen the memorial from a tour bus. That is probably close enough.
We visited bomb shelters in Laos, the "Hanoi Hilton" prison in Vietnam, and bombed out buildings throughout SE Asia. And don't forget the Pearl Harbor Memorial at the USS Arizona. None of these are uplifting or enlightening experiences. It just illustrates man's inhumanity to their fellow man!
Likewise, I felt quite emotional when I visited the Gila River Relocation camp where my parents and families were incarcerated after Pearl Harbor. The remnants of the camp are in the middle of a barren desert! Some of my family had to endure the humid, mosquito infested swamps of Arkansas. But I was compelled to visit Gils since it meant so much to our family history.
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