Maybe you are looking to reflect on the past or pay your respects to those lost. Perhaps you want to see with your own eyes what you have only seen in the pages of history books. No matter your reason for going, these dark travel destinations are sure to bring past tragedies to the present by giving visitors a somber reminder of the death, suffering, and oppression that occurred there.
Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum
Auschwitz is a central symbol of the Holocaust. During World War II, the town of Oświęcim, Poland, was transformed into a network of camps known as Auschwitz. The main camp, Auschwitz I, existed as military barracks for the Polish army pre-Holocaust and bears the Arbeit Macht Frei gate. Originally developed as a POW camp, it housed numerous buildings converted into large open rooms with wooden beds, prisons, a gas chamber, and a crematorium. Over time, the camp evolved its methods of torture and execution. Block 11, open to the public, is known as “the prison within the prison.” It was here Nazi SS officers first used Zyklon B, a poisonous gas, on prisoners and subjected others to “standing cells,” with four people to a cell so no one could sit; “dark cells,” in which prisoners would suffocate to death; and “starvation cells.”
Under the direction of Nazi leadership, Auschwitz expanded to an area about three miles away called Auschwitz II-Birkenau. In the beginning, converted horse stables became residences, and bricks from the homes of evicted citizens were used to construct buildings to house prisoners for labor. Gradually, the camp expanded and became one of six Nazi death camps. Victims brought by trains through the gates of Birkenau were told they were moving to a new neighborhood. However, on the train platform the victims were sorted into two groups - those who would stay at the camps to work and those who would be sent directly to the gas chambers.
Auschwitz I and Birkenau are open for visits year-round. Set aside at least 90 minutes to tour Auschwitz I; the camp's original structures still are standing, and many are open to tour. Tours of Birkenau last about 30 minutes. Be sure to visit the International Monument to the Victims of Fascism in Birkenau, a memorial dedicated to the 1.5 million people murdered at Auschwitz.
Admission to the grounds of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial is free. Guided tours are available. Most hotels in towns surrounding Oświęcim offer all-inclusive packages that include a tour with an English-speaking guide and transportation to Auschwitz I, Birkenau, and the hotel. To guarantee entry to the museum on your day and time of choice, a reservation is recommended. Learn more at http://en.auschwitz.org.pl.
228 Peace Memorial Park
In 1945, Taiwan (which had been occupied by Japan for 50 years) officially became a province of the Republic of China. During the next year or so, tensions rose between the inhabitants and their new leaders, and things came to a head Feb. 28, 1947. A dispute involving government officials and a cigarette vendor led to several days of open rebellion - rebellion that was squashed, violently.
A March 29, 1947, New York Times article by longtime foreign correspondent Tillman Durdin reports “wholesale slaughter”:
Troops from the mainland arrived [in Taiwan] March 7 and indulged in three days of indiscriminate killing and looting. For a time everyone seen on the streets was shot at, homes were broken into and occupants killed. In the poorer sections the streets were said to have been littered with dead. There were instances of beheadings and mutilation of bodies, and women were raped.
At least 10,000 people were killed, but for the next 40 years - until martial law was lifted July 15, 1987 - public discussion of the “February 28th Incident” was suppressed. In 1995, then-President Lee Teng-hui formally apologized, and Taipei New Park - the first European-style park in Taipei, established in 1908 - was rededicated as the 228 Peace Memorial Park.
Open year-round, the park has numerous entrances on all sides from which paths wind through various areas, including a pagoda at the center of a pool, a bandshell, and a grassy area where groups of people can be found exercising. Roughly at the center of the 17-acre park is the Taipei 228 Memorial, erected on the 50th anniversary of the incident. An old broadcasting building in the park housed, until recently, a museum dedicated to the 228 massacre; in February 2011, the new National 228 Memorial Museum opened (not without controversy; activists marched in Taipei calling for the Kuomintang to take responsibility for the massacre).
The 228 Peace Memorial Park is located on the north side of Ketagalan Boulevard, in Taipei's Jongshen district. The park is walking distance (about a quarter mile) from Taipei Main Station. On the MRT (Taipei's subway), the NTU Hospital stop on the Danshui or Beitou lines is immediately adjacent to the park.
Salem Witch Trials Memorial
The name Salem immediately calls to mind the witch trials that occurred in Massachusetts in the late 17th century. Between February 1692 and May 1693, on the basis of accusations from two young girls, 29 people were convicted of witchcraft (then a capital felony).
Nineteen of those accused were killed by hanging, while Giles Corey was “pressed” - piled with heavy stones in an attempt to force him to enter a plea (he died without capitulating). Another five died in prison.
Today, Salem trades on this history in a variety of (sometimes contradictory) ways, with kitschy, witchy decorations around Halloween; a number of New Age-flavored boutiques and galleries; and markers noting historically significant sites associated with the trial period.
The home of Magistrate Jonathan Corwin, now known as the Witch House, is billed as “the only structure in Salem with direct ties” to the trials. The Salem Witch Museum, housed in a fittingly Gothic building, offers a dramatic overview of the trials.
The Salem Witch Trials Tercentenary Memorial offers a quiet place for more somber reflection on the costs of fanaticism. Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel spoke at its dedication in 1992. Twenty granite markers - each inscribed with a name and the date and manner of death of those killed - jut at intervals from a wall surrounding a grassy space shaded with locust trees. Designed to serve as benches, the markers - often strewn with flowers and mementos - are more evocative of gravestones. (The actual burial places of the victims are unknown; their bodies were returned to their families and not permitted to be buried in consecrated ground.)
Salem is a 30- to 40-minute drive from Boston via U.S. Route 1 North. The memorial is free and open year-round. The Witch House and the Salem Witch Museum both are open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., but while the museum is open year-round, the house closes from mid-November through March (tours are available by appointment). Museum admission is $11.
House of Terror
If walls could talk, those in the building at Andrássy út 60 in Budapest, Hungary, would tell a tale of torture and death. What once was known as the House of Loyalty now goes by the name House of Terror - a more accurate description for the atrocities that occurred within its walls - to remind those who visit about the fear two separate totalitarian dictatorships instilled in the citizens of Hungary.
The Ferenc Szálasi-led Arrow Cross Party, a fascist group aligned with Nazi Germany that came to power in 1944, occupied the building from 1937 to 1945. The organization led brutal murders of Hungarians and the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz and other concentration camps. In 1945, under the direction of Péter Gábor, a secret communist organization known as the State Security Department established its headquarters in the recently abandoned building to command its reign of oppression. Both the Arrow Cross Party and the State Security Department converted the building into a hub for imprisonment, interrogation, and torture. Those being interrogated often were murdered. For those who didn't lose their lives, there were underground prison cells waiting to hold them captive.
The House of Terror's walls lead visitors through a maze of rooms featuring a torture chamber, reconstructed prison cells, examples of propaganda, a wall of victims' headshots, Gábor's office, the anterooms of the Arrow Cross Party and the AVO, and the Hall of Tears.
The House of Terror opened as a museum Feb. 24, 2002. Entry to the museum is 2000 HUF, or just over $7. Temporary-exhibition tickets can be purchased for 1500 HUF, or about $5.50. Most of the placards in the museum are in Hungarian, but each room contains an information sheet in English.
For more information, visit www.terrorhaza.hu/en.