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British Nazis have caused outrage in Germany after giving the Heil Hitler salute at a concentration camp where nearly 50,000 people were murdered.

A photo of the group, believed to be British fascists , at the Buchenwald camp complex near Weimar is now at the centre of a police criminal probe.

They gave the banned salute in a subterranean ante room of the former crematorium known as the 'corpse cellar' because bodies of the dead were stored in it before incineration.

Public displays of Nazi salutes are strictly forbidden under Germany's postwar constitution and the UK Nazis could be jailed for up to six months if they are found.

(Image: Getty)

Bild newspaper reported that the members of a group called "National Action“ posed for the photo on May 20 and broadcast it on Twitter.

"What was especially perfidious," said Bild, "was the fact that next to large hooks from which the SS hung the bodies the neo-Nazis wrote 'meat hook' next to it."

Read more:Rise of Hitler-loving National Action

The custodians of Buchenwald, which is visited by half a million tourists and Holocaust survivors every year, immediately filed a complaint to police accusing the extremists of disturbing the peace of the dead.

Dr. Volkhard Knigge, director of the memorial site, said: "The British neo-nazis displayed a specific criminal energy in the corpse cellar of the camp.

"They openly identified with the Nazis and their mass murder programme. This is a grave insult to the 280,000 people who were imprisoned here, some of them British."

He added that he believed the act was not spontaneous but staged to cause the maximum amount of outrage possible.

A police spokesman said: "We take this very seriously and are investigating to identify the culprits."

National Action has a homepage stating it was formed in 2013 and boasts of having dozens of members.