A 26-year-old Lithuanian national was fined 2,000 zlotys (approximately $550) after giving a Nazi salute at the Auschwitz memorial site in Poland, local police said.
According to authorities, the incident occurred Saturday, when the man's wife photographed him giving the Nazi salute. Security personnel at the Auschwitz Museum detained him and called police.
The sign at the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp
(Photo: Katarina Stoltz/Reuters)
Local police spokeswoman Małgorzata Jurecka told the Polish Press Agency (PAP) that the man was charged with "promoting Nazism." She said he admitted to the act and agreed to pay a fine of 2,000 zlotys.
According to PAP, promoting Nazism is a criminal offense in Poland punishable by a fine or up to three years in prison. The agency reported that local prosecutors had been informed of the incident.
The Auschwitz camp was established in 1940 near the Polish town of Oswiecim following Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland. Initially used as a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners, it was later expanded into a network of camps that included Auschwitz I, Birkenau and Monowitz. Birkenau became the complex's main extermination center, where large numbers of Jews brought from across Europe were murdered during the Holocaust.
Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest concentration and extermination camp complex operated by the Nazis. An estimated 1.5 million people were murdered at the site, most of them Jews. The Red Army liberated the camp on January 27, 1945.
Today, the site serves as a museum and memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, and the name Auschwitz has become one of the most enduring symbols of the Nazi extermination of European Jewry.