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POLICE AND PROSECUTORS in Poland are investigating graffiti in English and German that appeared on multiple buildings at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, the site of the former Nazi German death camp.
A museum guard found the graffiti sprayed on nine wooden barracks in an area where there is no CCTV monitoring, museum authorities said.
Police said they were seeking the person or people responsible for vandalising a historic object, a crime that carries a prison sentence of up to eight years.
Court experts would determine if the content of the graffiti was anti-Semitic, according to Malgorzata Jurecka, a police spokesperson in the town of Oswiecim.
If they decided it was, the perpetrators could also face hate crime charges punishable by three years in prison.
Museum officials characterised some of the graffiti as anti-Semitic and echoing phrases used by Holocaust deniers. They have appealed to witnesses for help in the investigation.
Officials from the museum and Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial condemned the vandalism as an affront to the memory of the 1.1 million people who are believed to have died at Auschwitz-Birkenau, which Nazi Germans operated in occupied Poland between 1940 and 1945.
“This incident, at such a major and significant site of the atrocities of the Holocaust, constitutes an attack not only on the memory of the victims, but also on the survivors and any person with a conscience,” Yad Vashem chairman Dani Dayan said in a statement.
“It is also yet another painful reminder that more must be done to raise awareness about the Holocaust and to educate the public and the younger generation regarding the dangers of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial and distortion,” Dayan said.
Some 1.1 million people, mostly European Jews but also Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and others died in the gas chambers or from hunger, disease and forced labour at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The site was turned into a museum and memorial not long after the Second World War ended. In 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic, it had more than two million visitors.
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You’d have to ask what sort of mindset someone has to deny something as well documented as the holocaust. Some people aren’t right in the head. Writing anti-semitic graffiti at Auschwitz is disgusting.
@Seán Ó Briain: all sorts of looney bins out there
This is awful of course but I remember visiting auschwitz a few years ago and the respect for the place was so low. Couples kissing, selfie’s by the chambers, taking photos of the belongings and hair of the victims when told not to, it was so sad to see. I also visited dachau and it was the same. We go there to see and educate ourselves on what mankind is capable of and how we should learn to never repeat it again.
I recommend everyone to visit but I just wish everyone would pay complete respect to the people who died there.
@Colm Phillips: kissing? Selfies? What sort of mindset would do this? I’ve never visited these places and know I should but really don’t think I could handle it. Ann Frank’s house disturbed me so much already but I’m glad I went.
@Shelly Levine: I know it disgusted me too but the worst was in dachau with students smoking weed in a small forest bedside the chamber. Like what a lack of respect some people have.
@Shelly Levine: Ask Foxy Knoxy and Rafael Sollicitio or whatever his name is, she performed hand stands in police custody while Meredith Kercher’s body was still warm.
@Colin Heffernan: Definitely a bit off topic there…
@William Tallon: Foxy Knoxy was lobbing the gob with her Italian boyfriend outside the taped off murder scene with TV cameras recording them. Definitely on topic!
Thankfully these kind of people are few and far between.
@Paul Whitehead: unfortunately they are not Paul.
have your say