Dutch woman arrested for Nazi salute at Auschwitz

A 29-year-old woman from the Netherlands was arrested on Sunday for doing the Nazi salute at the former Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, the Polish police announced. She made the Nazi salute at the gate with the text “Arbeit Macht Frei,” which translates to “work sets you free.” “The detainee was accused of participating in Nazi propaganda. She confessed,” the police tweeted.

According to the Polish news agency PAP, the woman was fined. The guards allegedly caught her red-handed while posing for a photo taken by her husband. “She stated that it was a bad joke,” a police spokesperson told PAP. 

Nazi Germany built the extermination camp near the Polish city of Oświęcim during World War II. The site has become a symbol of Nazi Germany’s genocide of six million European Jews, one million of whom died in the camp between 1940 and 1945, along with over 100,000 other victims.