When history leaves the page: ASU students explore 'dark tourism' in Europe
An ASU study abroad program brought together students and faculty from the School of Social Transformation and Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions to examine how difficult histories are remembered and visited. Above: Thousands of photos span five floors of the Kazerne Dossin Museum, showing the individual faces of those who faced mass persecution in Belgium. Photo courtesy of Caitlin Silva
Content warning: This story discusses difficult history, including genocide and human suffering, and includes images of sites and memorials associated with these events.
Geese wandered across the grass outside of Fort Breendonk in Belgium. Greenery surrounded the building's heavy concrete walls. From the outside, the landscape was beautiful.
When a group of Arizona State University students stepped inside, the contrast was striking.
Initially built for early 20th-century military operations, the fort was later converted into a World War II prison camp.
Its natural surroundings gave way to a cold, oppressive atmosphere. Dark, cramped rooms revealed the bleak conditions prisoners once endured, while videos and recordings confronted visitors with the suffering that took place there.
ASU student Jade Vauthier was struck by the divide between the seemingly peaceful grounds and the history held within the fort.
“It was very interesting to see the juxtaposition between life and literally death,” she says.
It was an uncomfortable experience, but that was the point. It’s why Vauthier and a group of fellow students traveled thousands of miles from home.
Over two weeks in Belgium and France, they visited places associated with some of Europe's most difficult history as part of an ASU study abroad program focused on “dark tourism,” or travel to places associated with death, disaster and tragedy.
The program brought together students and faculty from the School of Social Transformation and Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions to examine how difficult histories are remembered and visited. Ahead of World Tourism Day on Sept. 27, their experience offers a different way to think about seeing the world.
Stepping into history’s darkest moments
The program began several years ago with a focus on Holocaust memories and memorials.
Christine Holman, a teaching professor in the School of Social Transformation, created the program and, with fellow faculty member Erin Schneiderman, later expanded its scope to examine dark tourism more broadly. They now visit places such as the Paris catacombs and cemeteries in addition to Holocaust history.
The study abroad program is connected to Holman’s JUS 424: Ethics and Alternative Tourism, an online course offered each spring that examines the ethical questions surrounding different forms of tourism, including dark tourism.
Holman says visiting these places offers something a classroom cannot fully reproduce.
“I hope the students come out the other side of this study abroad not just knowing more about the Holocaust or knowing more about certain ways that death is commemorated,” Holman said, “but that the students will come out the other side of this much more empathetic and compassionate people.”
Students came from a range of academic programs — English, history, justice studies, tourism studies and more — and each chose the program for their own reasons.
Vauthier, an English major with minors in justice studies and social justice and human rights, wanted a deeper understanding of the human experience, which could help inform her future career.
“I want to go to law school eventually, and study human rights, so I think it was so important to go on the study abroad, to see the actual history of genocide and the communities that were impacted,” she said. “Reading about things that have happened in a history book ... obviously impacts you, as well as seeing movies and films about it. But being at certain sites and being immersed within that experience is completely different.”
Tourism student Andrew Dominguez came to the program from another angle. He had already researched the concept of dark tourism in the classroom, and now he wanted to experience it for himself.
“I had done all this research, and I wanted to see it myself in person,” Dominguez said. “I was just very excited to see how my research was going to go off the page and be real life.”
Fellow tourism student Mariah Champion had a similar reason.
“I've been in school for so long. I've been turning in the assignments, I've been writing all the papers,” she said. “I wanted to really bring my education to life.”
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The surrounding landscape of Fort Breendonk, a former military installation that also served as a military prison camp.
Photo courtesy of Alyssa Chavez
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The bathroom space at Fort Breendonk, which had little privacy and unsanitary conditions.
Photo courtesy of Caitlin Silva
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Students who participated in the study abroad program came from majors across the university, including tourism, justice studies and more.
ASU photo
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The students also had plenty of free time to explore on their own and decompress.
ASU photo
Learning to travel with care
Over the course of two weeks, students visited museums, memorials, cemeteries and forts, seeing preserved historical sites where difficult, often unthinkable, chapters of human history unfolded.
But experiencing the sites also raised questions about travel etiquette, as they noticed varying levels of carelessness among other visitors.
At the Paris catacombs, for example, students witnessed people touching human remains, brushing backpacks against bones and posing for casual photos. At a cemetery, students were surprised when even a tour guide stepped across graves.
The behavior spurred conversations about what visitors owe the places they enter, particularly when those places hold the remains or memories of people who died there. They wondered, what constitutes respectful tourism? And how much do cultural norms change the answer?
Students Dominguez and Champion said the experience reinforced the idea that travel carries responsibility.
“These are places where people live. This is their history,” Dominguez said. “We have to take care of it just as much as they do.”
Holman says those questions are part of learning to become a more thoughtful traveler.
“There are cultural codes and etiquette, and just ways of respecting other people's spaces and experiences, that I don't think you can get from just sitting in a classroom,” she said. “You have to go out there and experience that.”
Faculty also knew that two weeks spent visiting places associated with genocide and suffering could take an emotional toll. The program was designed to space out those experiences so students could process what they had seen while still experiencing the wonder of a new country.
They had plenty of free time to explore on their own and decompress, with some even venturing to Disneyland Paris.
“We go to these dark places, we have that emotional feeling,” Dominguez said, “but we're also able to have time where we're able to hang out with people and enjoy our time.”
Some of the students' favorite memories came from those pauses. They especially remember an evening around a restaurant table with people of different ages and backgrounds, chatting about their lives beyond the program.
“We're all different walks of life, as well as studying certain things,” Vauthier said. “We all were able to interpret different things that we were literally seeing in a different way.”
Champion agreed.
“You're meeting so many people who you would literally never have met if it weren't for the program,” she said.
What comes home with you
When the two weeks ended, some of what the students encountered followed them back to ASU.
For Dominguez and Champion, the questions about tourist behavior became something they wanted to explore further. As members of ASU's Tourism Student Association, they developed an educational event focused on responsible tourist behavior, bringing in panelists to explore how visitors interact with culturally and historically sensitive places and how travelers can approach these spaces respectfully.
The experience also changed the way the students think about their own travel. Now, when visiting somewhere new, they are more conscious of the history beneath the attractions and the responsibility that comes with entering someone else's community.
“I don't want to just see all the good parts,” Champion said. “I want to see the bad too, because that's also part of this history.”
More about the program
The program received support from the ASU Jewish Studies Program and the Gretchen Beinecke Charitable Trust, which helped offset costs for participating students. Students interested in the dark tourism study abroad program can apply here for the upcoming trip in May. A photo book from the most recent trip is located here.
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