Auschwitz Museum slams 'tasteless' ice cream stand outside 'Death Gate' where the Nazis committed mass murder in gas chambers

• An ice-cream stand has set up shop outside the "Death Gate" at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.
• An Auschwitz Museum spokesperson said it showed "a lack of respect for a special historical place."

Officials from the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp that Hitler's Nazis built in 1940 in occupied Poland have slammed an ice-cream stand for setting up shop outside the iconic "Death Gate."

Bartosz Bartyzel, a spokesperson for the Auschwitz Museum, told the Polish newspaper Gazeta Krakowska in a statement that it was "an example of not only aesthetic tastelessness but also a lack of respect for a special historical place located nearby," Sky News reported.

Despite the outrage at the ice-cream stand's location — a few hundred feet from the entrance to the Nazi death camp — it's parked on public land just outside of the camp, so there is nothing the organization can do about it.

"We trust that the competent local-government authorities will solve this embarrassing problem," Bartyzel told Gazeta Krakowska.

Nearby residents were also "upset" and believed the brightly colored ice cream stand looked "awful," Dagmar Kopijaz of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Site Foundation said, Sky News reported.

The "Death Gate," as it is known in Poland, is the main entrance to Auschwitz II-Birkenau. It is an expanded section of the Auschwitz camp complex, where Nazis kept vast numbers of prisoners in terrible conditions in 174 wooden barracks and murdered them in gas chambers before burning their bodies in the multiple on-site crematoria.

In total, Hitler's Nazis killed 1.1 million people in the Auschwitz camp complex from 1940 to 1945.

'Respect their memory'

The tracks that run through the "Death Gate" carried freight trains packed full of Jewish people from communities across Nazi-occupied Europe — the camp killed 865,000 on arrival.

Another instance of inappropriate behavior at the site comprised of a woman who internet users criticized for taking a model-style photo at Auschwitz.

The woman is seen posing and smiling in the sunshine in the photo. One Twitter user said, "Today I had one of the most harrowing experiences of my life. Regrettably it didn't seem everyone there found it quite so poignant."

Responding to the tweet, the Auschwitz Museum wrote, "Pictures can hold immense emotional & documentation value for visitors. Images help us remember.

When coming to Auschwitz Museum, visitors should bear in mind that they enter the authentic site of the former camp where over 1 million people were murdered. Respect their memory."

Correction: May 14, 2023 — An earlier version of this story misstated the number of people murdered at Auschwitz. There were 1.1 million killed, not 1.3 million.