A man from Italy was trapped in the visitor’s center of Auschwitz on the Holocaust Memorial Day and later questioned by police.
The Irish Times reported that Riccardo Pacifici, who had family members that died in the camp, was with a camera crew when they realized the center was closed while they were inside. Guards were supposed to let them out, but they never showed up and the crew became trapped.
Pacifici, a top Jewish leader in Rome, was in Poland with the crew to film a piece commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Auschwitz-Birkenau liberation on Tuesday. As previously noted, several world leaders were on hand for the Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The man and his crew were eventually able to escape out a window, but they triggered an alarm and then faced intense questioning by the Polish authorities.
Pacifici later described the handling of the situation as a “disgrace.”
More than one million people were killed at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Six million of the 11 million people murdered in the Nazi death camps were Jewish.