After the publication on Twitter of a photo of a young woman posing on the threshold of the former Nazi camp, the Memorial would like to remind you of the impact that these photos can have online.
“Today was one of the most poignant experiences of my life. Unfortunately, not everyone seems to experience it so intensely.” This tweet, published on April 15 by a British journalist and seen more than 22 million times, is accompanied by a photo of another young woman, smiling and enjoying the sun.
A cliché that could be described as banal, if it did not take place on the rails leading to the entrance of the former concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz, built by Nazi Germany during the Second World War, and today erected as a place of remembrance.
The tweet prompted the Auschwitz Memorial to take to the social network, reminding visitors to exercise decency when posting pictures online.
“Respect their memory”
“Images can hold immense emotional and documentary value for our visitors. Photos help us remember. When visiting the Auschwitz Memorial, visitors should bear in mind who enters the former camp where more of a million people were murdered. Respect their memory.”
A long-standing phenomenon
This is not the first time that the Memorial has intervened to ask for decency from its visitors. In March 2019, the institution had already taken the floor on the same phenomenon, by bringing together several shots of people playing the tightrope walkers on the rails of the camp.
In response to the British journalist’s tweet, many people report having witnessed such scenes during their visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
On social networks, whether Twitter, Instagram or even TikTok, the keyword Auschwitz is attached to a large number of publications, most of which fall within the context of the duty of memory. However, a number of them also show visitors, posing on the rails or in front of the entrance gate to the camp where more than a million people were killed in World War II.
If the museum then indicated that it was “aware that everyone reacts differently to the experience”, it also recalled that there are other ways to pay tribute.
In addition, the Memorial sounded the alarm in August 2020 over a TikTok trend of portraying themselves as Holocaust victims and telling the story of their alleged deaths in the Auschwitz camp. A phenomenon deemed “hurtful and offensive” by the museum.
