Tag: Dark History
95 cursed places found
Rumbula
A memorial commemorating one of the worst massacres perpetrated in the Holocaust by the Nazi Einsatzgruppen against the Jews of Latvia , when on just two...
Nyamata, Rwanda
Nyamata Genocide Memorial - One of the National Genocide Memorials in Rwanda – and one that really makes you gasp for breath – second only to Murambi .
Murambi, Rwanda
Murambi genocide memorial - Possibly the darkest, starkest, grimmest, most shocking site it is possible to visit as a dark tourist on planet Earth.
Dallas Holocaust Museum
Another Holocaust Museum in the USA , this one is in Dallas , Texas.
Ludlow
is a ghost town in Las Animas County, Colorado, United States. It was the site of the Ludlow Massacre–part of the Colorado Coalfield War–in 1914.
Srebrenica
Potočari memorial site The memorial for what is known as the Srebrenica massacre, or even Srebrenica genocide , committed in July 1995 by Bosnian Serbs...
9th Fort
and Monument, Kaunas The top dark site in the area of Kaunas , Lithuania , hands down. In fact it's three sites in one, as it were.
Jallianwala Bagh
Massacre Site A memorial complex and park in the heart of Amritsar , Punjab, north-western India , which in 1919 was the site of one of the worst...
Falstad Centre
This is the main memorial (as well as research/educational) centre in Norway about the camps for political prisoners, POWs and Jews that were established...
Bullenhuser Damm
memorial A relatively small but extremely moving memorial site in Hamburg , Germany .
Groß-Rosen
Though less well known than, say, Dachau or Buchenwald , Gross-Rosen was also one of the main large concentration camps in what was then Nazi Germany .
Stutthof concentration camp
The concentration camp that the Nazis set up at the start of World War II for the Danzig/ Gdansk area, as the first such camp in what is today Poland .
Cape Town
The second capital of South Africa (officially the first is Pretoria, but parliament, government and president are partially based in Cape Town too).
Monument to the 1973 uprising, Bangkok
A monument to and exhibition about the violent clashes between protesters and government forces in 1973, near the Democracy Monument, where protesters...
Barcelona
(at present) - The capital city of the “autonomous” Catalonia province in north-eastern Spain (at least as long as Catalonia doesn't achieve actual...
Gisozi Genocide Memorial Centre, Kigali, Rwanda
Kigali Genocide Memorial The main memorial centre for the Rwandan genocide .
Chicago
The third-largest city in the USA , (after New York and L.A. ) and one of its most spectacular as far as skyline (skyscrapers!) and location are concerned.
My Lai, Vietnam
My Lai (Son My) A massacre site in South Central Vietnam – here, in a former rural village area happened what is often considered to have been the worst...
Sandbostel POW camp
memorial A former Nazi WWII camp for POW s, later overflow concentration camp , in fact one of the most significant such sites in northern Germany .
Belzec
Bełżec Bełżec was one of the three death camps purpose-built by the Nazis in the east of Poland as part of " Operation Reinhard ", which was the code name...
Nanjing Massacre Memorial
The Nanjing massacre (often also referred to as "The rape of Nanking" ) was one of the biggest war crimes committed by Japan during their war against...
Tarrafal, Cape Verde
Tarrafal prison camp, Cape Verde Islands A former prison/ concentration camp in the then Portuguese colony of Cape Verde , namely on the island of...
Suwalki
The capital of the most north-eastern of Poland 's provinces.
Yad Vashem
This is the Holocaust memorial site in Israel , namely in Jerusalem , to the west of Mt Herzl: a hilltop 'national cemetery', 'Mount of Remembrance',...
Pirna-Sonnenstein euthanasia centre
Pirna-Sonnenstein Schloss (castle) Sonnenstein in Pirna in Saxony, Germany , was one of the six "euthanasia" killing centres of the Nazis ' " Aktion T4 ".
Los Angeles
The largest city in California, and the second largest (after New York ) in the whole of the USA .
Holocaust Memorial Centre Skopje
Holocaust Memorial Centre of Macedonia A relatively new memorial museum commemorating the deportation and extermination of the Jews of Macedonia in the...
Pawiak prison museum
Warsaw A museum in the partly reconstructed basement of a former prison building, which today is one of Warsaw 's most important monuments to the Polish...
Sobibor
Sobibór The site in eastern Poland of one of the three death camps of Operation Reinhard in 1942/43, the very deadliest phase of the entire Holocaust .
Army Museum Paris
Army Museum & Napoleon's tomb One of Europe's premier military museums, which amongst many things has extensive sections about World War One and Two...
Sachsenhausen concentration camp
Sachsenhausen The site of a large Nazi-era concentration camp on the outskirts of Berlin , Germany .
Babi Yar
UPDATE 2 March 2022: like the rest of Kyiv , this site is now out of reach for tourism due to Putin’s ongoing war against Ukraine .
Jewish Holocaust Museum, Vilnius
( ?) One part of the Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum which, as the name spells out, presents an exhibition about the Holocaust in Vilnius and Lithuania at...
Anne Frank House Amsterdam
Anne Frank House The house in which Anne Frank wrote her famous diary while in hiding from Nazi persecution in Amsterdam during WWII .
Sajmiste
The principal site of the Holocaust in Belgrade and one of the (almost) "forgotten camps".
Washington D.C.
The capital of the USA and as such the power centre of the world's most powerful nation.
Skede memorial
Skede Holocaust memorial This lonely spot north of the twin towns of Karosta and Liepaja on the Baltic coast of Latvia was the site of massacres...
Mittelbau-Dora
Of all the large memorial sites of former Nazi concentration camps in Germany , Mittelbau-Dora stands out in a number of ways: the camp was the last one...
Neuengamme concentration camp
The site of Hamburg 's own former concentration camp during the Nazi era in Germany – a less well-known name than Auschwitz or Dachau perhaps, but it was...
Goma, DRC
A city in Eastern Congo (DRC) on Lake Kivu near the border with Rwanda .
El Paso
Texas The westernmost city of Texas, USA , right on the border river that separates the richest nation in America from its poor and troubled neighbour...
Versöhnungskirche (Evangelical Church)
The Church of Reconciliation has been conceived as a timely reply to the atmosphere of terror, abandonment and despair that years ago dominated the Dachau...
Sardarapat
A huge monument commemorating the decisive battle in which Armenia defeated Turkey in 1918 and thus "saved the nation" from potential annihilation.
Ntarama, Rwanda
Ntarama Genocide Memorial Site - Site of one of the many massacres at churches that were so typical of the Rwandan genocide .
Breendonk
A former fortress, originally built as part of the defensive fortifications around the nearby city of Antwerp, Belgium .
El Mozote
The site of the worst single atrocity committed by the US -backed (and US-trained) right-wing militias in the Civil War in El Salvador .
Museum of Tolerance Los Angeles
Museum of Tolerance, L.A. The Museum of Tolerance (commonly referred to as MOT for short) in Los Angeles , California, USA , features multimedia-heavy...
Gusen
Gusen was nominally a satellite camp of Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria , though it eventually was even larger than the main camp.
Fuhlsbüttel prison and satellite camp memorial museum
( for German speakers) A small memorial/museum commemorating in particular the time when this prison was used during the Nazi era in Germany to...
Brandenburg euthanasia centre
Brandenburg 'euthanasia' centre (now possibly more) The site of one of the six euthanasia centres of the " Action T4 " in Nazi Germany .
Hamburg
Hamburg is Germany 's second largest city, after the capital Berlin – also in terms of dark tourism.
Ani
A city of ruins in the far east of Turkey .
Amersfoort camp
Site of a small former concentration camp in the Netherlands , during the time of Nazi Germany 's occupation of the country.
Riga Ghetto Museum
A partly open-air kind of museum in Riga that is about the Riga Ghetto specifically but also about the Holocaust in Latvia in general.
US Holocaust Memorial Museum
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum This is one of the world's most important Holocaust memorial centres, even though, being in the USA , it is...
Nyarubuye, Rwanda
Nyarubuye Genocide Memorial One of the more remote of the National Genocide Memorials of Rwanda .
Holocaust Memorial Center Budapest
Holocaust Memorial Center, Budapest A modern memorial site in Budapest comprising of a restored synagogue, an outdoor memorial complex and an indoor...
Lodz
The third-largest city in Poland (after Warsaw and Krakow ), and one of its youngest.
Jewish Museum Berlin
Jewish Museum, Berlin One of Berlin 's most acclaimed new museums (opened 2001).
Oslo Holocaust Museum
Holocaust Centre at Villa Grande, Oslo A stately mansion in Oslo , Norway , that during WWII was the residence of Vidkun Quisling, the head of the...
Yerevan
The capital city of Armenia , and home to the country's premier memorial about the Armenian genocide.
Kigali, Rwanda
Kigali - The capital city of Rwanda and very much the country's nerve centre.
Tsitsernakaberd Armenian genocide memorial, Yerevan
Tsitsernakaberd Armenian genocide monument & memorial museum - The main site commemorating the Armenian genocide of 1915 (and the build-up to it),...
Belgrade
The capital city of Serbia , and the greatest metropolis of the entire Balkans.
Dallas
Texas The major commercial, financial and transport hub in Texas, USA .
Liepaja
A town on the Baltic coast of Latvia . It is also a significant sea port.
Budapest, Hungary
Budapest The grand capital city of Hungary .
Prague
The capital of the Czech Republic … and one of the world's foremost city tourism destinations – and it also has a couple of things to offer to the dark...
Philadelphia
A city on the East Coast of the USA which calls itself the "city of brotherly love" (after the literal translation of the Greek roots in its name) and was...
Bisisero, Rwanda
Bisesero Genocide and Resistance Memorial Not only one of Rwanda 's six National Genocide Memorials, also a memorial to resistance against the Rwandan...
Cape Town Holocaust Centre
One more dark site in Cape Town , one that may come as a bit of a surprise in this location (it certainly was a surprise find for me!), is its Holocaust...
Ebensee
In Ebensee there was one of the most significant satellite camps of the Nazi Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria during the final years of WWII .
Trawniki
A village in eastern Poland whose name became associated with the mostly Ukrainian guards who were recruited to serve in the concentration camps and, in...
Yaros prison island, Greece
Yaros (Gyaros) The infamous prison island in the Aegean Sea, basically a completely barren rock, which was used as a detention centre/ concentration camp...
Friedrichstraße & Tränenpalast
Friedrichstraße station & 'Palace of Tears' As one of the latest additions to Berlin 's extensive dark tourism portfolio, a new exhibition opened in...
Katyn museum
& Citadel ( if you speak Polish) A fairly new museum in Warsaw about the Katyn massacres of a large part of the Polish military's officer class and...
Schöneweide Nazi forced labour camp memorial site
Schöneweide memorial A real rarity: a cluster of surviving original barracks that were once a Nazi forced labour camp in Berlin ...
Ararat
Mt Ararat (Arği Daği) + meteor crater and "Noah's Ark" (but weirdness factor partly up to 10) Mt Ararat is considered by Armenia to be their very own holy...
Anne Frank Centre
Berlin A small exhibition in central Berlin about the life, hiding, betrayal and death of Anne Frank on the one hand, and a youth-oriented...
Red Cross Museum, Geneva
Geneva in south-western Switzerland was the birthplace and is still the HQ of the (original) Red Cross, the first and possibly still the best-known...
Theresienstadt
Terezin/Theresienstadt A fortress/fortified town in the north of the Czech Republic , originally dating from the late 18th century, but known mostly for...
Choeung Ek killing fields
This is THE national memorial site for the Cambodian Genocide at the hands of the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot between 1975 and 1979.
Flossenbürg concentration camp
memorial site One of the less well-known sites of the former main concentration camps within Germany , in a remote corner of Bavaria.
Krakow
The main city of southern Poland – and a place with a particularly rich history.
Leipzig
The second largest city in eastern Germany (and formerly the GDR ) after Berlin , and also my personal second favourite one in the east.
Museum of Occupation
Museum of the Occupation of Latvia A private museum in Riga about the occupation of Latvia by the USSR in 1940/41 and 1944 to 1991 as well as the Nazi...
Majdanek
A former concentration camp and death camp near the city of Lublin – as the first one of its kind in this occupied territory.
Chacabuco
One of northern Chile 's countless former nitrate mining ghost towns , which, in addition to that fact alone, earns a special place on the dark tourism...
Mudyug Death Island
Mudyug or "Death Island" - An island north of Arkhangelsk in north-western Russia that once was home to a British concentration camp .
Yasukuni shrine & Yushukan
Yasukuni shrine & Yushukan museum The infamous Tokyo Shinto shrine dedicated to Japan 's war heroes, up to and including WWII , and some of its convicted...
Hack Green nuclear bunker
Hack Green secret nuclear bunker A former secret nuclear government bunker in the middle of Cheshire, Great Britain .
Contemporary History Museum Maarjamäe
Contemporary History Museum at Maarjamäe - A branch of the Estonian History Museum of Tallinn , the contemporary part is housed in a former palace at...
Camp Kigali Belgian Memorial
The site in Rwanda 's capital city Kigali where ten Belgian UN peacekeepers were murdered by the Hutu extremists in order to provoke a withdrawal of the...
Memorium Nuremberg Trials
A fairly new and modern memorial museum about the legendary Nuremberg Trials, housed in the very courthouse that the trials took place in, now commodified...
Dutch Resistance Museum Amsterdam
Dutch Resistance Museum - - A museum in Amsterdam about the various forms of resistance against the Nazi occupiers during WWII in the Netherlands – but it...