Auschwitz pleads with tourists to stop striking pose in popular spot
The Auschwitz Memorial which sits on the site of a former Nazi concentration camp has asked visitors to stop taking photos walking on train tracks.
The memorial posted on Twitter, including photos of tourists walking on the tracks, asking for people to stop taking pics when visiting the museum.
“There are better places to learn how to walk on a balance beam than the site which symbolises deportation of hundreds of thousands to their deaths,” the memorial tweeted.
The memorial preserves the site of the former German Nazi Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp in Poland.
“Remember you are at the site where over one million people were killed. Respect their memory,” the memorial tweeted.
The tracks the memorial is referring to led to the Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp.
The museum describes the camp as a symbol of “terror, genocide” created by the Nazis in mid-1940.
The tweet was liked more than 29,000 times and re-tweeted 13,700 with many saying the memorial needed to be treated with respect.
One woman tweeted it’s “a very necessary post”.
“Our picture-taking habits are completely out of control,” she tweeted.
“I may be visiting in the summer, I will make sure I am aware of your photography policy.”
Another tweeted taking photos on the tracks “is horrible”.
But others defended taking photos.
“Different people deal with uncomfortable emotions in different ways-such as laughing at a funeral,” one woman tweeted.
One man suggested walking on the tracks: “symbolises we’re in a much better place now”.
“Let people smile,” he tweeted.
“Remembrance does not mean being solemn and stern all the time.”
Auschwitz Memorial responded to the tweet adding “smiling is human” and there are “human stories” from the camp that “can make people smile”.
“You do not have to be solemn and stern all the time,” it tweeted.
“Yet, there are some things which are simply disrespectful.”
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