On Wednesday, the unidentified blogger made a "funny" travel post later condemned by netizens as “disrespectful” and “offensive” - on the railway tracks outside the gates of the largest infamous death camp in Europe where some 1 million people were tortured and slaughtered before it was liberated by the Soviet Army in January 1945.
What if someone who travels with a rubber duck & uses it as an artistic Instagram convention arrives at @AuschwitzMuseum?
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) 6 November 2019
Is the rubber duck in front of the Gate of Death disrespectful - even unintentionally? Or is it a side effect of the visual world we should accept/ignore? pic.twitter.com/RVqqVPL9CH
The Auschwitz Memorial and Museum immediately tweeted back at the controversial post, sparking discussion among netizens “What if someone who travels with a rubber duck & uses it as an artistic Instagram convention arrives at AuschwitzMuseum [...] Is the rubber duck in front of the Gate of Death disrespectful - even unintentionally? Or is it a side effect of the visual world we should accept/ignore?"
Twitter users were stirred by the insulting since-deleted post by the unidentified duck blogger, who later issued an apology after the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum recounted just a few of the many gruesome atrocities made by Nazis during World War II.
We kept the author informed about this discussion. The image has already been removed. The apology followed. pic.twitter.com/sZC2UnDbxl
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) 7 November 2019
The true identity of the person behind the Spanish-language Instagram account remains unknown.
Auschwitz-Birkenau was established by the German Nazis in 1940 and remained the largest Nazi concentration and extermination camp until the end of World War II. The site of the camp was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1979. It is now a symbol to remind the world of the horrors of genocide and of the Holocaust.
