Israeli Teen Arrested at Auschwitz for Nazi Salute During School Trip

An Israeli high school student was arrested after performing a Nazi salute during a school trip to Auschwitz, according to reports on Sunday (09.03.2025) by Israeli media. The teenager from Kiryat Bialik was on a school excursion in Poland when he made the gesture under the entrance sign of the Auschwitz camp. The young man was interrogated for two hours by Polish police and fined — he was handcuffed upon being caught by the camp guards while performing the salute. The act was recorded on security cameras, and the footage was handed over to the authorities. Officials charged him with promoting Nazism — performing a ‘seig heil’ is illegal in Poland and can result in up to two years of imprisonment. One of the students who participated in the trip recounted the incident to Channel 13 News. “We were at the entrance of Auschwitz, and a girl from our class was taking a picture of the gate — because everyone does this when they come,” she said. “He saw her taking a picture and greeted her as if trying to interrupt her, jokingly. I noticed what he did and approached him, saying, ‘put your hand down, it doesn’t look good.’ Then he told me, ‘what doesn’t look good? I’m just greeting her.’ ‘He really didn’t think anything of it,’ the student continued. ‘A second later, she took another photo, and he simply greeted her again. The security guards didn’t hear any explanation, they didn’t let us explain, they just took him away immediately.”