Le musée-mémorial comme lieu d’une expérience touristique spécifique, entre mémorial, musée d’histoire et lieu récréatif : le cas d’Auschwitz-Birkenau

Abstract

Most of the academic studies on memorial museums characterizes them as places of moral and identity experience, which opposes to the learning of history and to the recreational entertainment. However, the observation of the experience which take place there shows a more complex reality. Even if this identity dimension is important, the visit of a memorial museum is also the occasion of other experiences. From the point of view of learning, visitors realize what happed and associate emotions to their representation of the event. These are predicates that define it. From the entertaining point of view, they say they are happy with their visit and have a good moment. The innovation introduced by the museum-memorials is to associate these different experiences, going beyond the traditional divide between memory tourism, cultural tourism and recreational tourism. This is shown in particular by the analysis of data collected in a study of the school visit experience at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial-Museum.