Israeli teenager fined for urinating on Auschwitz Holocaust monument

An Israeli teenager has been fined after they were caught urinating on a memorial commemorating the victims of the Holocaust at the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum.

Witnesses said they saw the 19-year-old relieving himself on the site near the former camp’s crematoria.

They notified the museum’s guards, who called the police.

Under Polish law, desecrating a monument or other public place commemorating a historical event or a person can be fined or jailed.

The teenager, who was touring the Polish site with a group of students, was detained by police earlier this week and questioned for several hours.

He apologised and voluntarily agreed to pay a fine of $1,500 (£1,060), local media reported.

The Auschwitz Museum said the incident was “very regrettable". Of the 6 million Jewish people murdered by the Nazi regime 1.1 million were killed at the Auschwitz camp.

In January, 12 anti-war protesters who stripped naked in front of the Nazi site and killed a sheep were convicted of profaning the site.

A Polish court jailed two of the group for more than a year and fined the rest.