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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
World
Harriet Agerholm

Israeli teenager fined for urinating on Auschwitz Holocaust monument

An Israeli teenager has been fined after they were caught urinating on a memorial commemorating the victims of the Holocaust at the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum.

Witnesses said they saw the 19-year-old relieving himself on the site near the former camp’s crematoria. 

T h ey no tified the mus eum’s guards, who called the police.

Under Polish law, desecrating a monument or other public place commem orating a historical event or a person can be fine d or jailed. 

The teenager,  w ho w as  touring the Polish  site  with a  group of students,  was detained by police earlier this week  and questioned for several hours.

He apologised and voluntarily agreed to pay a fine of $1,500 (£1,060), local media reported.

The Auschwitz Museum said the incident was “very regrettable". Of the 6 million Jewish people murdered by the Nazi regime 1.1 million were killed at the Auschwitz camp. 

In January, 12 anti-war protesters who stripped naked in front of the Nazi site and killed a sheep were convicted of profaning the site.

A Polish court jailed two of the group for more than a year and fined the rest.

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