Berge, van den 0
Holocaust Commemoration Culture: The
Influence of Mass Media on Cultural
Memory and Trauma Tourism.
Maud van den Berge
JUNE 8, 2020
AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE
, Berge, van den 1
Maud van den Berge
Stacey Vorster
Advanced Research Writing
08/06/2020
Holocaust Commemoration Culture: The Influence of Mass Media on Cultural Memory
and Trauma Tourism.
At the beginning of 2017, Israeli-German writer Shahak Shapira launched his website
yolocaust.de to raise awareness for the way in which visitors interact with memorial sites
commemorating the Holocaust. Shapira’s work shows how tourists are often indifferent towards
the meaning of the Berlin Holocaust Memorial by photoshopping their selfies in gruesome
archival photographs of the Holocaust (see Figure 1. Trigger Warning: Disturbing images of
death). His website portrays the controversial comments from people on his project which makes
clear Shapira’s motive; instigating a conversation about commemoration culture. Millions of
people visit ‘places of trauma’, such as the Berlin Holocaust Memorial or the Anne Frank House,
every year, and “the vast majority ... are tourists” (Clark 68). Laurie Beth Clark uses the term
“trauma tourism” for this phenomenon, and she describes it as a term that incites conversations
about the way in which people interact with spaces that are created to memorialize historically
traumatic events, and how they contribute to commemoration culture. To continue these
conversations, this paper will focus on how The Anne Frank House is positioned within
commemoration culture in relation to trauma tourism, the commodification of memory, and the
concept of post-
memory. The
Anne Frank
House is an
intriguing case
study because it
differs slightly
from other
memorial sites in Figure 1 Examples of Shapira's work
Holocaust Commemoration Culture: The
Influence of Mass Media on Cultural
Memory and Trauma Tourism.
Maud van den Berge
JUNE 8, 2020
AMSTERDAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE
, Berge, van den 1
Maud van den Berge
Stacey Vorster
Advanced Research Writing
08/06/2020
Holocaust Commemoration Culture: The Influence of Mass Media on Cultural Memory
and Trauma Tourism.
At the beginning of 2017, Israeli-German writer Shahak Shapira launched his website
yolocaust.de to raise awareness for the way in which visitors interact with memorial sites
commemorating the Holocaust. Shapira’s work shows how tourists are often indifferent towards
the meaning of the Berlin Holocaust Memorial by photoshopping their selfies in gruesome
archival photographs of the Holocaust (see Figure 1. Trigger Warning: Disturbing images of
death). His website portrays the controversial comments from people on his project which makes
clear Shapira’s motive; instigating a conversation about commemoration culture. Millions of
people visit ‘places of trauma’, such as the Berlin Holocaust Memorial or the Anne Frank House,
every year, and “the vast majority ... are tourists” (Clark 68). Laurie Beth Clark uses the term
“trauma tourism” for this phenomenon, and she describes it as a term that incites conversations
about the way in which people interact with spaces that are created to memorialize historically
traumatic events, and how they contribute to commemoration culture. To continue these
conversations, this paper will focus on how The Anne Frank House is positioned within
commemoration culture in relation to trauma tourism, the commodification of memory, and the
concept of post-
memory. The
Anne Frank
House is an
intriguing case
study because it
differs slightly
from other
memorial sites in Figure 1 Examples of Shapira's work
