Outrage after Auschwitz installs showers to ‘cool down’ visitors
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The "mist showers" were installed to keep visitors cool, but sent the wrong message given the death camp's infamous history. (AP Photo/Alik Keplicz) (2009 AP)
The proprietors of the Auschwitz concentration camp have found themselves in hot water after installing showers in the former Nazi extermination camp in a bid to “cool down” visitors to the onetime slaughterhouse, which is now a museum commemorating the Holocaust.
Mist showers have reportedly been installed at the death camp’s entrance to help tourists battle the high summer temperatures in Poland, where Auschwitz is located.
However, for some Jewish visitors to the museum, the showers have evoked harsh memories of the execution of more than 1.1 million at the death camp, many of whom were murdered by being marched into showers filled with poison gas.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“Israel visitors to the museum could not ignore the connotation of showers being put in place at a site where more than a million Jews were murdered by the Nazis in gas chambers during the Holocaust,” Israel Hayom reported on Monday.