This chapter sketches out an overview of thanatourism's progress in the UK and the USA including its academic development, the moral panic that has surrounded it in the media, the debate about its motivations, its political and ideological effects, and its future, including the question as to whether it can properly be categorized as a single entity.
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., has received visitation levels in excess of 2 million per annum since its opening in April 1993. Such a development was not without controversy. The museum’s permanent exhibition contains more than 5,000 artifacts, including photographs, uniforms, letters, and a rail car used to take Jewish prisoners and others to the death camps. Through the use of computer terminals, visitors are able to review records in newspapers, watch film clips, and hear taped interviews with Holocaust survivors. Such a concern with replication and simulation is central to the treatment and analysis of the phenomenon known as “dark tourism” (tourism of sites of death, atrocity, and mass killing). This article analyzes the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in the context of dark tourism, concluding that the museum’s nature, content, and purpose pose questions about visitor motivation, “dark” attraction development, ethical management, and the interpretation of history.
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