British tourist goes viral for video complaining about high prices and poor quality of Auschwitz Museum cafe

A British tourist has gone viral for a TikTok video of her complaining about the high prices and low quality of drinks at the cafe at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum, the museum on the site of the former Nazi concentration camp where over one million people were murdered.

The video, posted by user FreeSpirit666 on September 14 and captioned “Prices at auschwitz,” has racked up four million views and over 202,000 likes.

“We fancied a coffee, so there is a restaurant there because we were early, so we thought we would get a coffee, but they don’t do decaffeinated and they don’t do any other milk other than real milk,” the tourist, Lynne, says.

So, she got a “strawberry smoothie, which tasted very watered down.”

Her daughter, Kerry, had a lemonade, which tasted like “Dettol,” an antiseptic cleaning product. Lynne takes a sniff of the bottle and says it smells like “toilet cleaner.”

Together, their drinks cost 9 pounds, Lynne complains.

“When you come to Auschwitz, bring some food and drink,” she says.

The video drew a range of responses, some appearing to crack jokes over the post, while others saying she was disrespectful and should be “ashamed.”

A spokesperson for the museum tells the UK’s The Times that the cafe is run independently.

“For us, the essential point remains that people come to the Auschwitz Memorial to learn about the history of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp, to confront the fate of its victims and to commemorate them,” he tells the paper.

Alex Hearn, the co-director for the UK’s Labour Against Antisemitism, says, “This highlights how some people have become disconnected from the true horror of the Holocaust and the death camp,” according to The Times.