Choose your ticket: Auschwitz or Roman Colosseum

Choose Your Ticket: Auschwitz or Roman Colosseum

Copyright 2016 Don Ray

Society’s attitude toward Auschwitz and the Roman Colosseum  may tell us something about ourselves.

Nobody likes Auschwitz.  Everyone perceives it as a place of tragedy, except for perhaps a handful of unrepentant psychopaths.

Now go to the Colosseum.  Within its walls countless thousands upon thousands were murdered, executed, tortured, and generally torn asunder, no small number of them because of their non-conforming religious beliefs.  The Colosseum was a place of unbridled horror, blood, gore, terror, and suffering.

Auschwitz had to be kept hidden from the general populace.  Its perpetrators operated in secrecy behind walls.  The Colosseum operated for entertainment of the general public.  Admission was free.

The operators of Auschwitz were hunted down, imprisoned, executed, and universally condemned in public opinion.  The operators of the Colosseum are for the most part praised as one of the great civilizations in history.

Now listen to the visitor to
Auschwitz.  They generally speak in reserved, respectful, somber, reverent terms.  They show few vacation pictures of Auschwitz, and almost apologize for the grim tone interrupting the rest of their vacation pictures.

Now listen to the visitor to the Colosseum.  The pictures are not uncommonly displayed along with pictures of the cruise boat and the restaurant and the Forum.  The visit is described in words and tone more or less consistent with the rest of the tour stops, and seldom somber or thoughtful or grim or depressed.

Based on events, value, morals, ethics, and the nature of blood, death, suffering, and carnage, it is not self-evident why one of these two places should be a place of somber pilgrimage and the other a photo op before which the happy tourists are more often than not are pictured smiling.  (How many tourist pictures of Auschwitz do you expect to see with the happy tourists bubbling and smiling?  How many people even place themselves in a picture of their visit to Auschwitz?)

Is it merely the volume of death, the difference in headcount, the quantity of blood spilled, that makes the Colosseum romantic and Auschwitz a grim memorial? .....or is it the entertainment aspect?  Dare we not be too hasty to condemn the Colosseum because after all, we also crave entertainment?  Is it that we can identify with the spectators, aka mobs, sitting in the stands?  Does sport and show make all the dismembered bodies OK?

We can self-righteously declare we would never have closed the door on the chamber in Auschwitz.  But can we so confidently declare we would not have joined our neighbors and buddies and walked through the cobbled streets to drink and cheer and jeer and laugh in the towering seats of the Colosseum?

The tourist pictures and attitude and descriptions of Auschwitz and the Colosseum speak not of any significant difference in the nature of events that transpired within their walls, but speak volumes about us.

And if  we dare recognize and admit how perilously close our cheering at the football and rugby and hockey and roller derby and kick-boxing match resemble the cheering of the spectators giving their thumbs up or thumbs down at this week’s big matchup at the Colosseum,  can we be all that sure we would not have closed that chamber door at Auschwitz?