Dark tourism: An investigation into people's motivations for visiting World War II concentration camps: A case study of Sachsenhausen and Auschwitz

Abstract

The fascination with death and disaster is everywhere. There is always something in the papers, in the news, about death. This fascination has gone beyond simply reading about it. It has now become a form of tourism, called 'dark tourism'. Sites such as the D-day beaches, the Imperial War Museum, Auschwitz and Ground Zero, to name but a few, are all known as dark sites, either places where death happened or a place dedicated to death and disasters. As this phenomenon has grown, authors have begun to study the subject, including Foley and Lennon who labelled it 'dark tourism' while Seaton preferred the term 'thanatourism', but it has emerged that there has been little research on why people visit such sites. Sachsenhausen and, especially, Auschwitz were amongst the biggest concentration camps in the Second War World where many thousands of people were killed during the Holocaust. Today, both camps have become prime sites of dark tourism. By analysing tourists' reasons for visiting these sites, the author believes that it will give a better understanding of dark tourism in general. Qualitative and quantitative research was carried out by visiting both sites by the use of 17 questionnaires and 17 unstructured informal questions. This study has been divided into six chapters. The first gives an introduction into dark tourism, and an introduction to the study itself. The second is a literature review about dark tourism and different motivations. Chapter three gives details of the methodology used within the research project while chapter four presents the results of the research that was undertaken. The fifth chapter provides a discussion, analysis and interpretation of the results and the final chapter is a summary and conclusion to the whole study. It also provides recommendations for future research.