Police in Poland have arrested 14 men and women who slaughtered a sheep and stripped naked at Auschwitz.
The group, aged 20 to 27, later chained themselves together at the former Nazi death camp’s front gate (pictured), which bears the words “Arbeit macht frei” (Work makes you free).
Their identities have not been confirmed, though it has been established that the activists comprised both Poles and foreigners. It’s been suggested they were protesting against the conflict in Ukraine.
According to reports, the men and women draped a white banner with the red text “love” over the gate and filmed the exercise with a drone.
Guards at the site, which is now a museum, immediately intervened and police said that all those involved had been detained. The museum was temporarily closed.
Bartosz Bartyzel, a museum spokesman, said the group had committed an unspeakable act. He said: “We are shocked and outraged by this attempt to use this memorial site for a protest and which mars the memory of thousands of victims.”
Piotr Cywinski, the museum director, said: “This is the first time something like this has happened at Auschwitz. I have no idea what their motives were.”
Auschwitz was built by the Nazis after occupying Poland in 1939. At least one million European Jews were murdered there between 1940 and 1945. A further 100,000 non-Jews also died there.
Poland’s chief rabbi Michael Schudrich said: “Any use of Auschwitz for political statements, even using Auschwitz for moral statements, is not how Auschwitz should be remembered. The Germans used Auschwitz to try to eliminate the Jewish people. Any happenings are a desecration of the memory of all those killed at Auschwitz: Jews, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, Roma and others.”
