The main gate with the inscription “Arbeit macht frei” (literally in English: “work makes (one) free”) at the entrance to the Auschwitz German Nazi death camp is pictured ahead of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s landmark visit in Oswiecim, Poland on December 5, 2019. – German Chancellor Angela Merkel will honour Holocaust victims on December 6, 2019 with her first official visit to the former Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, a Nazi German killing factory where more than 1.1 million people, mostly European Jews, perished during World War II. (Photo by JANEK SKARZYNSKI / AFP)
WARSAW — Polish police said on Sunday they had detained a Dutch tourist for giving the Nazi salute at the site of the former death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.
“Officers from (the southern city of) Oswiecim detained a 29-year-old woman from the Netherlands today,” regional police tweeted.
“The tourist had been performing the Hitler salute in front of the “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Sets You Free) gate,” they added.
“The detainee was charged with engaging in Nazi propaganda. She confessed.”
Prosecutors issued her with a fine as punishment, which she accepted, according to the Polish news agency PAP.
It added that she was caught in the act by guards while posing for a photo taken by her husband.
“She explained it away as a bad joke,” regional police press officer Bartosz Izdebski told PAP.
Nazi Germany built the death camp in Oswiecim after occupying Poland during World War II.
The Holocaust site has become a symbol of Nazi Germany’s genocide of six million European Jews, one million of whom died at the camp between 1940 and 1945 along with more than 100,000 non-Jews.