Red-faced tourist detained for performing Nazi salute at Auschwitz "as a joke"

Red-faced tourist detained for performing Nazi salute at Auschwitz "as a joke"

pzk net, CC BY 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

A Dutch tourist was left red-faced after she was detained and fined for performing the Nazi salute at the Auschwitz concentration camp, which she described as a “bad joke”.
A 29-year-old Dutch citizen was detained and fined for performing a Nazi salute at the entrance to the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz, in the south of Poland.
According to a statement given by Bartosz Izdebski, head of the press office at the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum, the incident took place on Sunday, January 23, when the tourist asked her husband to take a photo of her doing the Nazi salute at the entrance to the concentration camp.
The police arrested both of them and took them to the police station in Oswiecim, where the public prosecutor ordered the woman to pay a fine and interrogated her husband.
The woman described her gesture as “a bad joke”, saying that she regretted the action and that she accepted the fine.
In Poland, publicly praising any totalitarian ideology or displaying any related symbols or gestures can result in imprisonment of up to two years.
In 2013, two Turkish tourists were caught in a similar situation at Auschwitz and were sentenced to six months in prison, as well as a fine.
It is calculated that around a million people, mostly Jews, were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau between 1942 and 1945.
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Written by

Tamsin Brown

Originally from London, Tamsin is based in Malaga and is a local reporter for the Euro Weekly News covering Spanish and international news. Got a news story you want to share? Then get in touch at editorial@euroweeklynews.com.

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