Barrage of abuse for teen who posts smiling selfie at Auschwitz
July 22, 2014, 11:39 am
A teenager has provoked outrage on Twitter after posting a selfie she took at Aushwitz, along with a smily face emoji.
Breanna Mitchell, who goes by the Twittter name is ‘Princess Breanna’, posted the Tweet in June, although it has only recently been picked up online.
The offending selife has gone viral, being retweeted over 500 times and causing a barrage of online criticism.
“How can you be happy and smile in this pic?” asked Twitter user Tara Simpson. “Do you not understand the horrors and murders that happened here? I’d be crying.”
Other users were equally incredulous. ‘Incredibly disrespectful,’ tweeted Jamie Roe.
‘Ehm, you took a selfie in a place where thousands of people were murdered during WWII. Are you f*****g insane?’ posted @watpoe.
Breanna defended herself against the indignant outpour, tweeting, “Yeah, I do understand what happened there. I studied it for years with my dad but he died…a year ago, so that trip actually meant something to me and I was happy about it.”
Although Breanna tweeted that she wishes “people would quit tweeting to, quoting, retweeting, and favoriting my picture of my smiling in Auschwitz Concentration Camp,” the teenager also appeared to be pleased with her new-found Twitter fame.
Despite pleas for the photos to be removed, the photo remained online. Breanna tweeted, “Over 150 retweets. Turnnnnnn uppppppp.”
Some Twitter users jumped to her defense, however. Tori tweeted, ‘Y’all acting like the girl took a selfie with Hitler himself, chill.
Another user took credit for taking a similarly offensive selfie:
Breanna isn’t the first person to take selfies that have been deemed inappropriate.
Prime Minister David Cameron, Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were met with distaste after they took a selfie at Nelson Mandela’s funeral.
Auschwitz exhibition to open in California next year
In the run-up to the exhibition, a Nazi freight train car like the ones used to transport Jews and others to the Auschwitz concentration camp arrived at the site on Thursday. It will be part of next year’s exhibition.
Auschwitz survivor, David Lenga, 95, said during the event: "We all owe it to the Holocaust victims – both those who lost their lives and those who were fortunate to survive – to show our respect. We must remember them with dignity and gratitude and recognize the horror they endured”. Another Auschwitz survivor, 99 year-old Joe Alexander was also present.
The Auschwitz. Not so long ago. Not so far away exhibition is the first touring exhibition on the Nazi German concentration camp of Auschwitz. It has been prepared jointly by the Auschwitz Museum in Poland and Spanish company Musealia.
It explores the dual identity of Auschwitz as a physical location—the largest documented mass murder site in human history—and as a symbol of the borderless manifestation of hatred and human barbarity.
It includes more than 700 original objects such as suitcases, eyeglasses and shoes that belonged to survivors and victims of Auschwitz.
Other artifacts include concrete posts that were part of the fence of the Auschwitz camp; fragments of an original barrack for prisoners; a desk and other possessions of the first and the longest serving Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss; and a gas mask used by Adolf Hitler's elite SS security force.
John Heubusch, executive director of the Ronald Reagan Foundation, has said that the exhibition ”does not only commemorate the vast human losses that mankind experienced in what was one of the darkest chapters in its history, but also points to the efforts that should be undertaken to uphold the memory of the millions of people who lost their lives”.
The exhibition has already been shown in Madrid, New York and Kansas City. It is currently on display in Malmoe, Sweden, where it closes in January.
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