...Going places with Kofi Akpabli - Are you a Dark Tourist (2)
The largest of all Nazi concentration camps, Auschwitz (or Oswiecim as it is called in Polish) is believed to have served as an extermination camp for more than one million people, most of which were Jews.
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Majority were killed in camp’s gas chambers, while others died of disease or starvation.
Set up by the architect of the holocaust Heinrich Himmler, Auschwitz was also the site where evil “Angel of Death” doctor Josef Mengele performed his experiments on live people.
Due to its notoriety, Auschwitz is one of the most visited Dark Tourism Destinations in the world today.
The popularity of the site is so huge that access is only granted to organised tour groups during peak hours of the peak season. Tours are of course a source of massive revenue.
The River Kwai Bridge, Thailand
While most of WWII fights took place in Europe, other parts of the world were also heavily involved. Much of South East Asia was under Japanese occupation between 1942 and 1943 and plans were to also invade India
To accomplish the goal, Japanese troops stationed in Burma (today’s Myanmar) needed more support but since no convenient infrastructure was available, the decision was made to build a railway that would connect Kanchanabury in Siam (today’s Thailand) with West Burma’s Moulmein.
The quarter of a million people, both Asians as well as the prisoners of war from the Allied (Commonwealth, American and Dutch) nations were forced into labour to get the construction underway.
Camps were built in both Burma and Siam starting the railway from opposite ends to meet in the centre. Due to food shortages, workers suffered from malnutrition.
Medical supplies and sanitary facilities were either nonexistent or insufficient giving malnourished and overworked people little chance to battle off malaria, cholera or the tropical ulcer which were common in these areas.
Construction of the 416 km long Siam – Burma railway (the Death Railway) took 16 months, during which an estimated 100,000 workers, of which approximately 13,000 were prisoners of war died. Their bodies were buried alongside the tracks wherever they’d dropped.
Travellers wishing to get the glimpse of what conditions the Death Railway workers lived and died in can visit one of the three museums that contain graphic photographs and tools used by the prisoners to build the railway.
It is also possible to hop on a train and take a ride on the Death Railway the construction of which claimed so many lives. To have memorable pictures, most Dark Tourism visitors do not pass on the opportunity to walk along the River Kwai Bridge.
Ground Zero, New York City,
The 9/11 attacks in which two planes flew into the World Trade Centre (WTC) buildings in New York City, claiming lives of nearly 3,000 people, count as the most notorious modern history attacks in the world.
Needless to say, macabre site of such worldwide significance draws attention of many Dark Tourism enthusiasts and counts as one of the most important Dark Tourism
