DARK TOURISM AND SITES OF SELECTIVE SILENCE – COMMUNICATION ON HOLOCAUST AND ITS MEMORIAL PLACES IN LATVIA

Solveiga Krumina-Konkova

Abstract


By highlighting the essential features of dark tourism and its development trends, the author focuses on Holocaust memorial sites in Latvia as possible destinations for dark tourism routes. The article points to the ambiguous and often contrastive attitude of the local community towards the use of these places for dark tourism purposes, which is related to the way how and whether local communities and different social groups preserve Holocaust events in their living memories. According to the author, Holocaust memorial sites can be described as the sites of selected silence, and this designation quite accurately describes how society in Latvia remembers and preserves memories of its tragic historical heritage.


Keywords


dark tourism; Holocaust; Holocaust memorial places; cultural memory

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