Teen Takes Heat for Ill-Conceived Selfie at Concentration Camp

[TM99]

54. No, she is a self-absorbed kid. There is a difference.

In the mid 1980's, I and 49 other American exchange students to West Germany boarded a bus to visit Bergen-Belsen during our year abroad. On the bus ride, yeah, we were teenagers. We laughed, made stupid & inappropriate sexual jokes, and listened to Tears for Fears. Then we arrived.

Once outside, we all realized the significance of where we were. The hills along the path we were now walking down were not hills, they were mass graves with tens of thousands of bodies buried therein. There was little life in this place, only an occasional bird or stray flower. By the time we reached the memorial wall, there was not a single one of us acting like self-absorbed teenagers. Most of us were in tears, and the rest were silent and deep in thought.

No she doesn't merit 'hatred' or 'abuse'. She is emblematic of a generation that, due to commercialization of advanced technology, have become detached from reality and lost in their own little cyber worlds. Taking a 'selfie' at a concentration camp is as bad as the young woman last year who took silly photos at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. There is a lack of empathy. There is a general lack of knowledge of history and the horrors that reside in places like concentration camp memorials and the like.

Did we take photos at Bergen-Belsen? Sure, but not group photos of a bunch of teens laughing and/or giving the finger. We took photos of the actual place. I have 30 year old photos reminding me of what I saw and experienced there. I and many other teens at the time experienced this and will never forget it. That is a huge difference to what this young woman, and I am sure countless others her age, have and will do at places like Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.