Postcards from Auschwitz: Holocaust Tourism and the Meaning of Remembrance by Daniel P. Reynolds (review)

Daniel Reynolds starts, appropriately given his title, with the image of postcards from Auschwitz. The presence of this banal material object brings to the fore long-running questions over whether, and how, to represent the Holocaust. This broader set of concerns and the particular critique—and dismissal of—Holocaust tourism are what Reynolds seeks to argue against. Rather than dismissing Holocaust tourism as kitsch, in this book he comes to its defense. Exploring a number of former death camps in the first half of the book, and then four major cities in the second half, Reynolds confesses a preference for those sites that are relatively "undeveloped" given that "it is here … where the sense of connection to history can be most profound" and "have the power to impart a greater impact on their visitors than meets the eye" (229). However, his faith in Holocaust tourism also extends to those places that are more "developed" and problematic, where Reynolds holds on to the potential for Holocaust tourism—and tourists—to cast "a critical, even skeptical view toward memorials" (230).

Reynolds's sense of Holocaust tourists as active agents is flagged from the outset as he metaphorically turns over postcards from Auschwitz to read what Holocaust tourists have written on the other side. As he notes, "tourism is not possible without tourists" and therefore "the perspective of tourists remains central to the inquiry" of the phenomenon of Holocaust tourism (20). Therefore Reynolds promises a book that will "address how tourists process their encounters with places of remembrance" (20), and a study that "aims to offer a rich account of those who undertake travel to these destinations and what they recall, including my own experiences and those of other travellers, who often share their responses in print and online media" (21). These aims are laudable. Relatively little has been written on Holocaust tourists' experiences and interpretations, although there is some recent literature that is missing from Reynold's bibliography. However, Reynolds fails to deliver on his promised "rich account" of tourist experiences and understandings in a book that is largely derivative rather than a close reading of the flip side of the postcard to unravel what Holocaust tourists have been writing.

One example of this lack of engagement with Holocaust tourists themselves comes in Reynolds' chapter on Auschwitz, which includes a single summary paragraph stating that "the narrative that dominates the accounts by visitors to this site is that of a powerful or disturbing personal experience" (54) and notes "a common theme of having seen something important and having learned from it" (54–55). However, this statement on visitor reflections on Auschwitz is based on "a perusal of the responses on the websites Virtual Tourist and TripAdvisor" (251). Another "perusal," this time "of tourist photography on social media or shared on public websites such as Flickr, TripAdvisor, Facebook, or VirtualTourist" leads Reynolds to include only his own photographs, rather than those taken by Holocaust tourists, in his chapter on tourist photography and the sites of a number of former camps.

In an era of social media, there is a wealth of the digital equivalent of the other side of the postcard on, for example, Instagram feeds with their combination of image and text. But Reynolds does not make use of the wealth of material that is available from contemporary Holocaust tourists in order to critically explore it. Rather his own words and images—and the words of other scholars writing on Holocaust representation—dominate in this book, rather than the words of Holocaust tourists. This is a missed opportunity and results in a book that is not a deep engagement with Holocaust tourism and tourists, but rather Reynolds's more personal reflections on a number of sites.

This is perhaps particularly visible in the second half of the book where Reynolds turns from the former camps to consider the memorial and museum...