Auschwitz asks visitors not to balance on train tracks
March 21, 2019
The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum implored visitors to respect the memories of the 1.1 million people who were killed at the concentration camp — and not to balance on the train tracks that brought Holocaust victims to the site.
"There are better places to learn how to walk on a balance beam than the site which symbolizes deportation of hundreds of thousands to their deaths," the museum wrote on Twitter.
They also posted several pictures visitors had taken of themselves walking on the tracks.
The Auschwitz Museum added in a later post that photography will not be banned at the site, but that "we ask visitors to behave respectfully, also when taking pictures."
In recent years, numerous visitors to concentration camp museums and other Holocaust memorials have been criticized for taking selfies and other seemingly jovial pictures at the sites that remember the victims of Nazi genocide.
Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest Nazi death camp, where 1.1 million victims, including some 1 million Jewish prisoners, were killed.
Last year, the Auschwitz Museum saw a record number of visitors, with 2.1 million people coming to visit the site.