Israeli teen fined for urinating on Auschwitz memorial

WARSAW, Poland — A Polish court has fined an Israeli teenager who admitted to urinating on a memorial at the site of the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, a court spokeswoman tells AFP on Tuesday.

The 19-year-old man, who was identified only as Zeev K., committed the act in late March and was arrested the same day but was released after admitting to it.

“The court found the accused guilty as charged and imposed a fine of 5,000 zloty (1,160 euros, $1,350),” Daria Pichorz from the district court in the southern city of Krakow says.

Pichorz says that Zeev K. was not present for the verdict by a regional court in the nearby town of Oswiecim where Auschwitz is located, but adds that he had agreed to pay the fine.

A guide from the museum and several other people witnessed the act.

The memorial in question is located between the ruins of the two crematoriums at the former death camp set up by Nazi Germany after occupying Poland during World War II.

Auschwitz-Birkenau has become a symbol of Nazi Germany’s genocide of European Jews, one million of whom were killed at the camp between 1940 to 1945.

More than 100,000 others including non-Jewish Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and anti-Nazi resistance fighters also died there.

— AFP