GOP/POLITICS: “A congressman’s video taken inside a gas chamber at the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz has drawn criticism from the Polish museum and memorial that oversees the site where hundreds of thousands of people were murdered during the Holocaust.
During a trip to the concentration camp, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) shot a roughly five-minute video of his visit, filming and narrating as he viewed the train tracks that carried prisoners to the camp and piles of shoes left by prisoners. The video was posted to YouTube over the weekend.
Midway through the video, Higgins films himself inside an Auschwitz gas chamber, explaining, as he turns his camera toward a hatch in the ceiling, how Nazi guards would murder their victims by dropping poisonous gas through the hatch. He then moves in front of the nearby ovens, explaining how the camp’s guards would force other prisoners to load the dead bodies for cremation.
That portion of the video prompted a response from the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum, which wrote on Twitter that ‘everyone has the right to personal reflections. However, inside a former gas chamber, there should be mournful silence. It’s not a stage.’
In a subsequent post, the museum posted a photo of the sign that stands outside the gas chamber, which reads, ‘you are in a building where the SS murdered thousands of people. Please maintain silence here: Remember their suffering and show respect for their memory.’ “
-Louis Nelson, “Louisiana congressman criticized for selfie video inside Auschwitz gas chamber,” Politico, July 5, 2017 09:26am