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The importance of preserving the history of the former Nazi concentration camp 75 years after liberation.
An anonymous woman's seductive pose for a photo on the train tracks that once carried over a million people to their deaths at Auschwitz went viral on Twitter, eliciting a response from The Auschwitz Memorial reminding visitors to be respectful.
Maria Murphy, a producer at GB News, captured and shared the image of the flannel-clad woman grinning as she sat on the tracks, leaning back with one hand holding her hair out of her face while an unnamed man crouched beside her to snap a photo.
Murphy served up a critical take with her caption: "Today I had one of the most harrowing experiences of my life," she wrote. "Regrettably it didn’t seem everyone there found it quite so poignant."
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Railway tracks from where hundreds of thousands of Jews were directed to the gas chambers to be murdered, inside the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz Birkenau or Auschwitz II, in Oswiecim, Poland. ( AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)
The Auschwitz Memorial chimed in among a slew of users calling out the inappropriate gesture on the thread, reminding visitors to be respectful in light of the site's tragic history.
"Pictures can hold immense emotional & documentation value for visitors. Images help us remember," the account wrote in part.
"When coming to @AuschwitzMuseum, visitors should bear in mind that they enter the authentic site of the former camp where over 1 million people were murdered. Respect their memory," it continued.
The memorial, which strives to educate current and future generations about the horrors committed at the former concentration and extermination camp situated in then-Germany occupied Poland during the Second World War, commonly shares images and comments dedicated to conserving the memory of those lost to Nazi genocide.
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Users, weighing in on the memorial's response, voiced their disbelief that "grown adults" have to be admonished for their misconduct at such a somber site.
"I can’t believe you have to tell grown adults to behave and be respectful. This should be common sense," one said.
"This picture is beyond disrespectful," another added in part.
Murphy, responding to a comment from GB News conservative commentator Darren Grimes on her own post, blasted the anonymous couple's "total detachment from reality" and, in a separate response to another user, explained that the tour had been going for one to two hours when the photo was taken, so the visitors could not claim "ignorance."
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The main entrance at the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz in Oswiecim, Poland, with the inscription, 'Arbeit Macht Frei', which translates into English as 'Work will set you Free", Sunday, Dec. 8, 2019. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
She also explained that the museum consistently urged visitors to remain "mindful and respectful" throughout the tour.
"You would think this sort of thing wouldn’t need to be specified as a no-go for that criteria," she added.
Murphy's post garnered over 30.5 million views as of Wednesday and sparked intense discussion about the appropriateness of selfie-snapping in such spaces, including a slew of remarks that slammed the move as "disgusting" and "offensive."
