|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Polish police fined a 26-year-old Lithuanian man 2,000 zlotys (approximately $550) for performing a Nazi salute during a visit to the Auschwitz memorial site on Saturday.
The man’s wife took a photograph of him making the gesture. Museum guards subsequently detained him and contacted law enforcement.
Local police spokeswoman MaĆgorzata Jurecka confirmed to the Polish Press Agency that the man was charged with “promoting Nazism.” He acknowledged making the gesture and agreed to pay the penalty.
Under Polish law, the offense is punishable by a fine or up to three years in prison.
Auschwitz was established in German-occupied Poland in 1940, initially to imprison Polish political prisoners. The Nazis later expanded it into a vast camp complex that included Birkenau, where they murdered Jews deported from across Europe.
More than one million people, the overwhelming majority of them Jews, were murdered at Auschwitz before Soviet forces liberated the camp on January 27, 1945.
The salute was a brazen desecration of the site, glorifying the very regime responsible for the mass murder of Jews there.
Take Action
CAM has launched Report It, a secure app to report antisemitic incidents anonymously and in real time. Donât stay silent. Download it today on the Apple App Store or Google Play. See it. Report it. Stop it.
