"Willfully clueless": Tourists slammed for disrespectful Auschwitz selfies
In a move that has been slammed as disgusting and disrespectful, a tourist has used her time visiting Auschwitz as an opportunity to pad out her social media feeds.
In a picture shared by GB News producer Maria Murphy, a man and a woman can be seen on the railway tracks outside of the main Auschwitz structure. He is crouched with a camera angled towards her, while she is posing on the tracks, hand in her hair with her face turned to the sky.
“Today I had one of the most harrowing experiences of my life,” Maria wrote on Twitter alongside the image. “Regrettably it didn’t seem [like] everyone there found it quite so poignant.”
She went on to explain that the tour had been going for a couple of hours by that point, so the tourists had no excuse for their ignorance and disrespect - especially as they were all “asked repeatedly to be mindful and respectful.”
And as Maria pointed out, “you would think this sort of thing wouldn’t need to be specified as a no-go for that criteria.”
Unfortunately, it seems that Maria was far from the first to witness such an act at the historic site, with thousands of irate commenters flocking to her post to share their experiences with disrespectful souls, and even more stopping by to condemn the thoughtless act.
“We saw the same when we were there just a few months ago. Total disregard,” wrote one.
“I visited in 2005 and every single person in my tour group had cried over the course of the tour,” one shared.
“Absolutely disgusting,” another declared. “When I went, people were taking selfies. So disrespectful.”
“Some people are really just willfully clueless and beyond ignorant,” came one hard truth.
And when one tried to suggest that everyone shouldn’t be so quick to judge, that they weren’t sure “we should police people’s facial expressions in reaction to almost incomprehensible experiences”, the rest were quick to disagree.
“This woman is posing on a railroad track that brought hundreds of thousands to their murders,” someone responded, to over 23,000 likes. “There is no nuance here.”
Another simply wanted to point out that “@AuschwitzMuseum asks people not to do this. It's so horrifying that it continues to happen.”
But the Auschwitz Museum’s official Twitter account perhaps put it best when they said, “Pictures can hold immense emotional & documentation value for visitors. Images help us remember.
“When coming to @AuschwitzMuseum visitors should bear in mind that they enter the authentic site of the former camp where over 1 million people were murdered.
“Respect their memory.”
Images: Twitter