2 men get prison for Auschwitz slain sheep protest

A Polish court has sentenced two Belarusian men to prison for a 2017 stunt in which they and other young adults stripped naked at Auschwitz and chained themselves together to the main gate as one of them slaughtered a sheep.

The District Court in Krakow confirms that the man who killed the sheep, Adam Bialiatski, was sentenced to a year in prison for animal cruelty and desecrating a site of memory, while a second man, Mikita Valadzko, was given eight months. Nine other participants were ordered to pay fines. The verdicts are final.

Bialiatski, who plunged a knife into the sheep multiple times, is the son of a prominent human rights activist in Belarus, Ales Bialiatski. He and Valadzko called their actions at the former Nazi death camp an “artistic performance” aimed at protesting the wars in Ukraine and Syria.

“Our Ukrainian brothers and sisters are still dying,” Bialiatski tells The Associated Press in an interview last year. “We thought if we do this performance art in a place like Auschwitz, we will attract attention to the war.”

— AP