Auschwitz Memorial, the museum located in Poland that tries to preserve the memory of what happened in the most fearsome extermination camp during World War II, has denounced the use of a Nazi symbol by a Finnish bar located in a village Lappila, in the municipality of Kärkölä (in the province of Päijät-Häme).
Through its Twitter account, Auschwitz Memorial published a photograph of the entrance of the bar, in which anyone can read the phrase in German 'Arbeit Macht Frei' ('Work sets you free'), the same which presides over the entrance of the concentration camp.
And it is clearly not a coincidence. The design of the iron sign placed at the entrance of the bar is an imitation of the original in the Auschwitz death camp, where millions of Jews were murdered for the mere fact of being Jews.
A "military" bar in a Finnish village of #Lappila.
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) November 12, 2019
"Arbeit macht frei" was a false, cynical illusion the SS gave to prisoners of the #Auschwitz camp. Those words became one of the icons of human hatred. It's painful to see the symbol misused this way. https://t.co/9d7aHlhPNJ pic.twitter.com/dbgH7Xjkzh
The publication of the tweet generated a wave of rejection, also coming from Finnish Twitter accounts, with comments against the public display of Nazi and fascist symbols. There were even those who communicated the existence of the symbol to the Finnish police, wondering if there is anything they are going to do.
The owner of the bar told local digital journal Seutu4 that he does not intend to remove the sign.
