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And for those who dismiss it as dark tourism today, of all days, should be a reminder that Holocaust memorials are a traveller’s duty.

If only to remind us that we can travel.

It was the dream of Anne Frank, writing her diary in her secret annexe in Amsterdam.

To travel the world and to become a journalist one day.

And hearing those transcripts in an audio in Anne Frank’s house in the Dutch city choked this hardened hack up at the privilege of being able to travel.

A curiosity at how others in other countries do things.

Both now and in the past has brought me to such places.

Nazis’ evil legacy

Even when fun and debauchery were the order of the day as in my much-storied booze bus trips to the Oktoberfest in Munich.

When we took a detour to the first Nazi concentration camp Dachau.

The horror of what happened there and in Auschwitz and Bergen.

And dozens of camps across Europe during the Third Reich should never be forgotten.

But alas have been with the atrocities in the Balkans in the Nineties.

The first occasion since the Nazis when houses were daubed with markings as a means of ethnic cleansing.

Sarajevo and beyond

In our lifetime: Balkans concentration camp

The horror of which can be seen at the Museum of Crimes against Humanity and Genocide in Sarajevo.

Where, of course, the ‘war to end all wars’, the First World War, started.

With the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

A century of conflict: Franz Ferdinand and Sofia

Alas, there is no shortage of genocides around the world and places we can visit to remember them.

So lest we forget that we should remember genocides every day.

And not just every January 27, the day the Russian troops entered Auschwitz in 1945.

And saw the hell that was that extermination camp.

Which it behoves us also to witness because holocaust memorials are a traveller’s duty.

Countries, Europe

Dachau and World Holocaust Day

27th January 202227th January 2022 funtime65

You sober up soon on a Munich Beer Festival bus booze tour when you step inside a concentration camp, and I reflect on that today… on Dachau and World Holocaust Day.

Dachau, 12 miles north of Munich, was the first and longest-running concentration camp, operating from 1933-45.

And it was set up just five weeks after Hitler grabbed power to initially house Communists.

Over the course of its 12 years in existence 32,000 people died in its cramped conditions.

That it was the first, and therefore a clearing house and thoroughfare for the whole death camp network, sets it out as significant.

The starting point

Dachau does not have the reference point of the Arbeit macht frei of Auschwitz, liberated 77 years ago today.

But it is the starting point, although not the first in history.

That black mark is attached to the Spaniard overseers in Cuba in the late 19th century.

While the British too implemented concentration camps in the Boer War.

The refrain for the Dead of the World Wars ‘Lest we forget’ is recognisable too.

Forgotten holocausts

But the chilling truth is that holocausts have been tolerated across the world over these past 77 years.

Europe has all too easily ignored countries in other continents.

But also their own where less than half a century after the gates of Auschwitz were opened we turned a blind eye to ethnic cleansing in the Balkans.

Sarajevo days

Sarajevo war history: And a replica of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s car

We all, of course, aren’t fortunate enough to visit Sarajevo to hear their story.

But should you be in that part of the world, perhaps enjoying the charms of the coast then allow yourself a detour there.

To the Museum of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide in the Bosnian city.

And remind ourselves that they were forgotten.

A salutary reminder and something I’ll reflect on… and Dachau and World Holocaust Day.