The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum on Friday said that it had barred an Israeli military delegation from carrying Israeli flags onto the grounds a day earlier because site management was not informed in advance of the event and so had not been able to grant approval for the flags.
The museum said it deeply regretted the incident, adding that its procedures were in place to prevent the Nazi death camp, where some 1.1 million people were murdered during the Holocaust, from being used for political purposes.
On Thursday, a delegation of 180 Israeli officers and security officials taking part in the “Witnesses in Uniform” Holocaust commemoration program was halted at the entrance to the Birkenau concentration camp when a local police officer refused to let them enter carrying flags, participants told the Ynet news site.
According to the report, Israeli officers and local agents were unable to reach an agreement with the police, and the soldiers had to enter without their flags.
Some soldiers at the event said the incident was tense and humiliating, and charged that the decision was driven by antisemitic beliefs.
“No ceremony has ever been stopped mid-way — never in Treblinka, Warsaw, or Majdanek,” one participant told Ynet. “This shows that we are still fighting against antisemitism in Europe, and there are still those who are trying to change the Zionist narrative and the sanctity of this place for us.”
According to the soldier, the delegation prepared as usual for the ceremony, marching from the outer entrance towards the camp gate with flags and military trumpets: “When we arrived at the gate, a Polish policeman stopped the first row and demanded that we not enter with flags. Despite arguments from the staff, he insisted. In the end, we were forced to dismantle the flags and leave them in the car.”
After the reports, the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum said it was “deeply concerned” about the incident but defended its decision, arguing that the event was not cleared with its administration in advance and that if such approval had been granted ahead of time, the group would have been allowed to enter with their flags.
“The Museum had not been informed in advance about the planned official ceremony involving a military formation marching with flags through the grounds of the former camp. Failure to follow the required procedures led to an unfortunate and entirely avoidable situation,” the museum said in a statement on X.
“These measures are in place to protect the dignity, solemnity, and neutrality of the space that is the former German Nazi concentration and extermination camp. Approximately 1.1 million people were murdered here, primarily Jews, but also Poles, Roma and Sinti, Soviet prisoners of war, and others. The special safeguards exist due to numerous past attempts to misuse this historical site,” the museum said.
“Under no circumstances can the grounds of the former camp be a space for uncoordinated manifestations or ceremonies, even those carried out with good intentions,” the statement added.
The museum also emphasized that the decision to halt the ceremony was not made by Polish police but rather by staff in keeping with its procedures, and argued that the whole incident could have been avoided with proper preparation.
“In this case, the organizers submitted a request solely to hold a ceremony at the monument in Birkenau at the end of their visit. The entrance into the Memorial in the form of a procession with flags and banners had not been declared in advance. Therefore, the Museum Security had to intervene (not the Polish Police).”
“The failure to follow procedures by the organizers was the primary cause of this completely unnecessary incident,” the museum said. “It is clear that had they, like many others before them, submitted a request for such a ceremony, the necessary permission would have been granted.”
The statement called on the organizers of future events and delegations to follow procedures and coordinate plans with the museum’s staff: “Doing so helps to prevent any misunderstandings, which is surely in the best interest of everyone who carries the burden of this difficult memory.”
The IDF’s “Witnesses in Uniform” program is held every year, with the aim of teaching Israeli soldiers about the Holocaust through trips to Nazi concentration camps in Poland.
Previous IDF ceremonies have been held at Auschwitz-Birkenau without incident, and delegations have been allowed to enter the camps with Israeli flags during past events.