A visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial site in Poland ended in an online uproar for a British tourist after she posted a TikTok video complaining about prices and the quality of drinks at a café near the former extermination camp.
The video sparked angry reactions from users who said her comments were inappropriate given the nature of the site, where about 1.1 million people were murdered during the Holocaust. The tourist, however, did not back down, and in follow-up videos attacked her critics and argued that she had merely criticized a café operating outside the camp grounds.
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British tourist Lynn's TikTok review of a café near the Auschwitz-Birkenau site
(Photo: TikTok / @freespirit666)
The video, posted to the TikTok account of the British tourist, Lynn, was titled “Prices at Auschwitz.” She has since made her account private, and the videos are no longer publicly available.
At the start of the video, she addressed viewers with a tip ahead of their visit to the site: “If you’re coming to Auschwitz in Poland, bring something to drink with you. We thought we’d get coffee, but they don’t have decaf coffee and they also don’t offer any kind of milk apart from regular milk.”
She went on to say that she ordered a strawberry smoothie that was, in her words, “very watery,” while the lemonade ordered by her daughter smelled, she claimed, like toilet cleaner.
The two paid £9 for the drinks, a price the tourist described as “very expensive.” She also said the taxi ride from the train station to the site cost them just £1.20, which she described as a “bargain.”
She ended by recommending that viewers bring food and drinks with them before visiting, while noting that visitors undergo a security check when entering the site.
The video amassed more than 4 million views, about 203,000 likes, more than 100,000 shares and around 8,000 comments. The controversy spread beyond TikTok and was covered by media outlets in Britain and Poland, including the Daily Mail, The Independent, The Times and Polish news site Onet.
Auschwitz
(Photo: Carl Advenchure / Shutterstock)
Many of the responses to the video were critical, with users arguing that focusing on the price and quality of drinks was inappropriate for such a place.
“This is a place people come to remember the victims, preserve their stories and learn about one of the darkest moments in history,” one user wrote. “The focus should be on honoring their memory, not turning the experience into a personal review.”
Another user wrote: “It’s not a place to complain about prices, for goodness’ sake. Go and think about the poor souls who lost their lives in barbaric ways, not the price of a damn drink.”
Another commenter asked: “Imagine even mentioning the fact that there’s no decaf coffee when you’re at Auschwitz.”
Alongside the direct criticism, a wave of dark humor also emerged in the comments.
“Will the cruelty at this place ever end?” one user wrote in a comment that received more than 84,000 likes.
(Photo: roamer.rat / Shutterstock)
Another commenter, whose response drew more than 83,000 likes, wrote sarcastically: “It’s all gone downhill since the change of management.”
Another comment, which received more than 72,000 likes, said cynically: “I think this really is the worst thing that happened there.”
Another user wrote: “No one knows suffering like these two ladies,” in a comment that received more than 33,000 likes.
Alongside those mocking the tourist, some also questioned the very existence of a café there.
“The fact there is a café at Auschwitz feels so dystopian,” read one comment that received about 56,000 likes.
The tourist, however, was unmoved by the criticism. In follow-up videos, she argued that she had been attacked online simply for expressing her opinion about the quality and prices of drinks at the café.
She called some of her critics “wokes” and “snowflakes,” and argued that it was in fact the responses she received that were disrespectful toward the camp and the people murdered there. She said she reported many of the comments to TikTok and that some were removed.
'It should be a memorial site, not an attraction'
“Nobody died in the café, nobody was murdered there in gas chambers,” she said in one of her response videos. “I just had a drink there, and it’s not even close to the entrance to the camp.”
She also questioned why food and drinks were sold there if visitors were not supposed to complain about the prices.
She later went further, accusing the site of profiting from the Holocaust and arguing that “it should be a memorial site, not an attraction.”
Despite the controversy, she made clear that she did not intend to retract her remarks.
She said reactions to her videos were divided between support and criticism, although negative responses were at that point outweighing the positive ones.
“I’ll get over it, and they’ll get over it,” she concluded.
Responding to the remarks, a spokesperson for the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum told The Times that the café is operated by an independent provider and that product prices are clearly displayed on site.
“From our perspective, the important point remains that people come to the Auschwitz Memorial to learn about the history of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp, to encounter the fate of its victims and to commemorate their memory,” the museum said.