A visitor to Auschwitz faces backlash for taking a tasteless photo on train tracks

News

by Yaron Steinbuch

April 18, 2023 | 12:04 p.m

A visitor to Auschwitz is facing backlash after she smiled and posed for a photo while sitting on a rail leading to the former concentration camp.

The visitor seemed unimpressed by the majestic site in Poland, where a photographer crouched to capture the shot on the tracks where trains carried hundreds of thousands of Jews and others to their deaths.

Maria Murphy, a producer with JP News, took on the deaf duo in a tasteless act on Saturday.

“I had one of the most horrific experiences of my life today. Sadly, not everyone out there seemed to find it very moving,” she said. she said in a tweet.

Dressed in a red flannel shirt, black T-shirt and black shorts, the woman smiles as she gazes into the sky as visitors walk toward the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The former Nazi complex now serves as a research center and memorial to the approximately 1.1 million people massacred during the Holocaust in World War II.

Murphy’s tweet, which has been viewed more than 30 million times, sparked a backlash against the anonymous pair.

“Awful. Do they really know where they are!” said one user on Twitter.

“Every adult in the world knows exactly what that path and those gates are. Especially the ones that pay to visit,” she said. wrote another.

“Anyone who takes a frosty photo outside of Auschwitz should be asked to view the recorded testimonies of Holocaust survivors, and to sit with their children and grandchildren as we flip through the pictures of our murdered family members,” Dr. family doctor and activist, he said in a tweet.

Murphy books: “A complete detachment from reality. That is the only explanation.” adding“The tour was already one to two hours long. There was no possible way to claim ignorance.”

She said visitors were asked to be respectful.

“You would think that this sort of thing wouldn’t need to be designated as a no-go by these standards,” the journalist wrote.

the Museum said in a tweet: “Photos can have tremendous emotional and documentary value for visitors. Pictures help us remember.

“When coming to the AuschwitzMuseum, visitors should bear in mind that they are entering the original site of the former camp where more than a million people were murdered. Respect their memory.”

On Tuesday, thousands gathered at the site of the March of Life, an annual Holocaust remembrance march that this year marks the eve of the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

This event takes place every year on Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel.

with mail wires