I’m the social media manager at Auschwitz and it’s not inappropriate to take selfies at the memorial – they’re a visual expression of our time

Taking a selfie at the Auschwitz memorial is known to cause a nuisance, but the museum’s social media manager says he does not consider it inappropriate.

Pawel Sawicki, 42, from Poland, has spent the past sixteen years working in Nazi Germany’s largest concentration and extermination camps.

He has seen a handful of disrespectful people smoking and throwing their butts on the ground or posing on the train tracks that transported Jews to the death camps.

However, in conversation with ShamePawel put forward an alternative narrative, claiming that it is not necessarily disrespectful to take a selfie in the museum.

“Selfies are a visual expression of our times,” he said.

Pawel explained that there are conditions that make a selfie acceptable, such as a sensitive caption.

‘Selfies are a visual expression of our times. I think it’s very normal that people want to document the places they visit in this way,” he explains.

The social media manager, who holds various positions at the museum, added that he often uses photos of Auschwitz from social media for lectures.

However, he draws the line at individuals “fooling around” and “making funny faces” for the camera, and will inform tourists when they cross that line.

‘There are also visitors who take professional photos with expensive cameras and then write an inappropriate caption. When I see those messages, I report them. There are more than 500,000 photos on Instagram under the hashtag,” he added.

Despite the inconsiderate tourists, Pawel stated that most visitors are respectful and interact with the museum in an appropriate manner.

The memorial center attracts millions of visitors every year, and Pawel says only a handful are disrespectful

Pawel (pictured) monitors every social media comment across all channels, including Instagram and Facebook

On the social media accounts that the site does have, Pawel monitors all online comments.

Across all platforms, the center receives roughly 5,000 new comments per day, and Pawel reads them all.

Only a small number leave negative comments, and he typically blocks between five and 20 accounts a day, some of which are bots.

Founded shortly after Nazi Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Auschwitz became the largest killing machine in history.

By the time of the liberation in 1945, more than 1.3 million people had died in the gas chambers, through executions and torture.

A quick search on social media will reveal several people taking selfies at the monument in Krakow, with respectful captions

Zoe from Ireland smiled for a photo at the metal fence of the former concentration and extermination camp and described the experience as ‘harrowing’

Valeria Corpuz from Amsterdam shared on Instagram a photo of her walking on the railway – an action not approved by Pawel

The memorial asked people to respectfully remember when they visited the site

It comes after dozens of tasteless photos of tourists posing at Auschwitz appeared online in April last year after the memorial museum urged visitors to show respect at the death camp site.

The debate started after a photo of a woman at the Auschwitz Memorial Museum went viral on Twitter.

The woman’s social media post sparked outrage as she was seen sitting on the railway tracks where the Nazis transported 1.1 million Jews, including a million, to their deaths.

The Auschwitz Memorial Museum has since called on so-called ‘Holocaust tourists’ to ‘respect’ the site.

But despite the museum’s calls for restraint, dozens of other photos have been unearthed on social media of tourists posing crudely at the death camp.

In one case, a glamor model claiming to have the biggest breasts in Spain posed under the ‘work sets you free’ sign at the entrance to the death camp.

Elsewhere, tourists have posed tastelessly on the tracks that have transported more than a million people to their deaths.