Auschwitz “cooling showers” leave visitors steaming

In another tweet, he said that the showers reminded visitors of the Auschwitz gas chambers, where more than one million people, mostly Jews, were murdered under the pretense of being sent to communal showers.

“The management decided that it was a good way to cool people off on a very hot day”, Bulka said.

“She of course apologized that it made me feel that way, but beyond that, they didn’t do anything”, Bolka said.

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.

Some visitors, however, have expressed outrage, immediately drawing parallels between the installation and the mock “shower” chambers which were used to lethally gas some of the Jews, Polish and Soviet political prisoners, Romani, and other “undesirables” killed there during the Holocaust between 1940 and 1945-in total, over a million.

Some prisoners were forced to enter gas chambers disguised as shower rooms, where poisonous gas was inserted through holes in the ceiling, killing the occupants.

“Youth groups that were there didn’t really notice [the cruel historical connection] and treated it like fun, but for me it was deja vu of the selection and extermination in the showers”, Bolka told Channel 2 of Israel. They cited several incidents already where tourists have fainted.

Pawel Sawicki, press officer at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, said that the decision to install the sprinklers had been taken on account of the summer heat, topping 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit). “People came by and had a shower”. “The health of our visitors is for us the priority during the time of these extreme [high temperatures] and the sprinklers have been really helpful”.

Israeli visitor Meyer Bulka described the sight of the showers as “a punch to the gut”.