Tourists offended by 'showers' at Auschwitz memorial entrance

Mary Bowerman | USA TODAY Network

Tourists who recently visited the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland were shocked by misting sprinklers that evoked memories of Nazi-era gas chambers disguised as showers.

Israeli media reported that Israeli tourists felt like the shower-like misters were insensitive to the memories of the Jewish people that were killed in gas chambers during World War II.

Meir Bulka, an Israeli visiting the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oswiecim, Poland, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that he was shocked when he saw the "showers."

"As a Jew, who has lost so many relatives in the Holocaust, they looked like the showers that the Jews were forced to take before entering the gas chambers," Bulka said.

Auschwitz memorial management defended the sprinklers in a Facebook post on Aug. 31.

"Because of the extreme heat wave we have experienced in August in Poland, mist sprinklers which cool the air were placed near the entrance to the museum," the statement said.

The sprinklers were placed near a ticket line and were meant to cool visitors, the museum said, adding that several people had fainted because of the heat this year.

"All the Israelis felt this was very distasteful," Bulka said. "Someone called it a 'Holocaust gimmick.'"

While Bulka said the museum should be more sensitive, the museum maintains the sprinklers are installed for practical reasons.

"It is really hard for us to comment on some suggested historical references, since the mist sprinklers do not look like showers and the fake showers installed by Germans inside some of the gas chambers, were not used to deliver gas into them," the museum said.

The museum said Zyklon-B, a poisonous gas, was "dropped inside the gas chambers…through holes in the ceiling or airtight drops in walls."

An estimated one million Jews were killed at Auschwitz. Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz and nearby Birkenau near Krakow in south-central Poland in January 1945.

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Contributing: Beata Biel