WARSAW, Poland – Three Polish teens who made a Nazi salute at the site of the former Auschwitz-Birkenau camp will be investigated by the local prosecutor’s office.
A photo of the teens making the gesture in front of the Death Gate, the entrance to Auschwitz II or Birkenau, where trains rolled through bringing thousands of Hungarian Jews to be gassed, was posted on Instagram by one of the teenagers.
The photo was discovered on social media by a representative of the Auschwitz-Birkenau state museum. It was later removed, but saved in a screenshot.
The railway track leading to the infamous ‘Death Gate’ at the Auschwitz II Birkenau extermination camp on November 13, 2014 in Oswiecim, Poland. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images/via JTA)
Museum officials filed a complaint with the District Prosecutor’s Office in Oświęcim, where the camp is located, about the offense. Propagating fascism is illegal in Poland.
“This is shocking behavior – especially in such a tragic place. The place where innocent people were imprisoned and murdered as a result of the criminal ideology of German Nazism. Such behavior, although fortunately extremely rare, is particularly painful when it concerns young people. It also shows how important it is not only to educate and to bring the youth up properly, but also to make people sensitive to the tragedy of all the victims of Auschwitz,” Pawel Sawicki, a museum spokesman, told JTA.
— JTA
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