As anyone who knows me or reads my work knows, I have an infinite amount of interest in writing about the Holocaust, in whatever genre: history, fiction, essay, travelogue, diary, memoir, poetry, whatever. I also have an infinite appetite for voices in writing about the Holocaust: sardonic, ironic, bemused, impatient, poignant, heroic, anti-heroic, sociological, callow, creepy, fantastical, comedic, whatever. But the article in the September issue of Harper’s, “My Auschwitz Vacation,” by the writer Tanya Gold, tested my patience. It’s unbearably familiar and hackneyed. How many articles can we read on the silliness and stupidity of a tourist’s response to an extermination camp? Teenagers go to Auschwitz and take selfies. Justin Bieber visits the Anne Frank House and writes in […]