Italian Jewish leader held in Auschwitz

The president of the Jewish community of Rome was detained overnight by Polish police after setting off an alarm at the former Auschwitz concentration camp.

At 11 p.m. Tuesday Riccardo Pacifici and the prominent Italian journalist David Parenzo finished filming a live program for an Italian TV station marking the 70th anniversary of the camp’s liberation by allied forces, when they discovered they had been locked inside the camp.

Italy’s ANSA news agency reported that the two, along with another Jewish community member and two crewmen, spent several hours trying to call for help, and eventually broke a window to escape. This immediately set off an alarm which brought police to the scene.

Pacifici, whose father was killed at Auschwitz, said the situation became more complicated because no one spoke Italian and they don’t speak Polish, according to Italian reports.

The five were interrogated by Polish police at the camp for some time. They were then taken to a police station for several hours until they were finally released from custody on Wednesday morning following the intervention of the Italian Embassy in Poland.

Pacifici later called the incident “shameful.”