Authors

Discussion

This paper will discuss the preservation, conversion and repurposing of communist-era forced labour camps and their contemporary role as carceral cultural landscapes in the Czech Republic, by focusing primarily on two key examples: prison heritage sites at the former forced labour camps in Příbram (Prague) and Jáchymov (Karlovy Vary). As Moran has argued, we should consider former places of incarceration as ‘landscapes with meaning and power’ (2016, p.129) and in recent years technological advances have enabled innovative ways of preserving and presenting the camp sites and the voices of those who experienced them to a much broader demographic. Today, the heritage organisations established at Příbram and Jáchymov both emphasise the importance of their educational outreach and activities, which are particularly designed to engage younger generations, through the adoption of initiatives which increasingly combine the opportunity for on-site visits to physical spaces of incarceration with supplementary digital content. However, we should be conscious of the messages these initiatives aim to communicate and the meanings that are embedded within them. Therefore, this paper will engage with contemporary debates around heritage and memory politics, particularly in relation to recent critical discourse over ‘carceral tours’ and the difficulty of balancing the authenticity of the visitor experience with the expected ‘drama of encounter’.