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Ice cream truck outside Auschwitz provokes criticism
(JTA) — Barely 200 yards from the former Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, visitors can now purchase ice cream, a fact that a spokesman for the museum called a sign of “disrespect.”
Since early May, an ice cream stand has sat some 200 meters (about 218 yards) from the camp’s red-brick “Death Gate,” where double rail tracks led directly to Nazi gas chambers. A photo of the stand circulated on social media this week, showing a kiosk with a pink logo reading “icelove,” along with signs advertising “ice cream” and “waffles” in Polish.
maybe auschwitz isn’t the best spot for an ice cream stand pic.twitter.com/7NJcfNI4Dx
— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) May 8, 2023
Paweł Sawicki, a spokesman for the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, called the ice cream stand “an example not only of aesthetic tastelessness, but also of disrespect for a nearby special historical site.”
But the trailer has set up shop outside the boundaries of the memorial’s legally protected zone.
“Unfortunately we have no influence over it,” Sawicki told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “We trust that the relevant authorities will solve this embarrassing problem.”
(Dagmar Kopijasz of the Foundation of Memory Sites Near Auschwitz-Birkenau)
The largest Nazi extermination camp has been preserved in Brzezinka, outside the southern Polish town of Oświęcim, also known under German occupation as Auschwitz. At least 1.1 million people died at Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945, including about 1 million Jews. Some 83,000 Poles and about 21,000 Roma also perished at the camp.
The people living in Brzezinka know the history of their village well, said Dagmar Kopijasz of the locally based Foundation of Memory Sites Near Auschwitz-Birkenau. In 1941-42, the Germans completely displaced Brzezinka to create the camp zone.
“It’s obvious that the local residents are appalled by this ice cream stand and upset by the whole situation,” Kopijasz told the JTA. “Everyone says in one voice that this is no place to sell ice cream.”
Today the camp is a tourist hotspot, seeing more than 2 million visitors a year before COVID-19-related lockdowns. The Auschwitz Museum’s bylaws require visitors to “behave with due solemnity and respect,” adhering to a respectful dress code. They are not permitted to carry or eat food, talk on the phone or take photos in certain areas. The bylaws extend to speaking in any way that violates the memory of Auschwitz victims, denies Nazi crimes, defames the memorial site or encourages “hatred of any kind.”
Nonetheless, several tourists have come under fire for perceived misbehavior. Alabama teenager Breanna Mitchell was lambasted for posting a grinning selfie at the death camp in 2014. That same year, an Israeli Facebook page with a title translated as “With My Besties in Auschwitz” collected real social media posts of Israeli teens posing with humorous faces and peace signs at the camp, going viral overnight before it was taken down.
Temperatures for visitors waiting in line in the summer can get hot, and in 2015, the museum attempted to cool people off with sprinklers — which were quickly criticized by some who found them too similar to gas showers.
Holocaust-themed selfie scandals have flared up around other memorials, too. Israeli-German writer Shahak Shapira created a website called “Yolocaust” to shame self-indulgent selfie-takers at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, imposing their photos over historical images of the Holocaust.
Local authorities in Oświęcim are investigating the ice cream stand’s location, according to Notes From Poland. Municipality Mayor Andrzej Skrzypiński announced that it was set up on private property, based on a contract between the owner of the land and the owner of the kiosk. However, it’s still unclear whether the operation is allowed under the local zoning plan, which requires approval from the governor of the province.
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Palestinian Authority TV Denies Holocaust for Second Time in a Month
French President Emmanuel Macron welcomes Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, Nov. 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Benoit Tessier
Two weeks ago, Palestinian Media Watch exposed that Palestinian Authority (PA) television hosted a journalist who insisted the gas chambers “narrative” could be dismissed with “very simple evidence.”
Now, PA TV has done it again. This time, the channel invited a Syrian journalist who said the war in Gaza is the “real” holocaust while the history of the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews is a “game that Israel plays”:
Senior Syrian journalist Mustafa Al-Miqdad: “It is incumbent upon the Palestinians today and those who support them to show the extent of the holocaust and genocide that the Palestinians have experienced for two years and almost a month in the Gaza Strip …
[They] were subjected to this holocaust, the real one- Regarding the Holocaust of the Jews there are many question marks from the Westerners, and not from our side that we deny it. Even from the West in general there are many stories that refute the accuracy of the [Jewish] narrative even if they talk about part of it, they talk about this [lack of] accuracy. This is the game that Israel plays.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Capital of Capitals, Nov. 16, 2025]
Antisemitism and demonization of the Jews constitute a core ideology of the Palestinian Authority and pave the way for it to incite and justify terror against Israelis. A key PA strategy towards this end is to delegitimize the Jewish people and their history, while replacing it with a fabricated story.
Whether denying Jewish history in the Land of Israel to brand Jews as “colonialists” — or denying and appropriating the Holocaust — official PA TV consistently broadcasts content designed to cultivate hatred of Jews and Israel.
It is difficult to comprehend how any Western government, particularly France with all that it went through in World War II, can still speak of the Palestinian Authority as reformed or of its chairman as “charting a course toward a horizon of peace” when PA media continues to broadcast shocking forms of Holocaust denial and appropriation.
Yet French President Macron and others insist on rewarding the Palestinians with a state governed by this very PA. Instead of demanding the most basic moral prerequisite for statehood — ending institutional antisemitism — Western leaders turn a blind eye.
Ephraim D. Tepler is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW). Itamar Marcus is the Founder and Director of PMW, where a version of this article first appeared.
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Norway Government Budget in Peril Over Oil, Wealth Fund’s Israel Investments
A general view shows Norway’s parliament in Oslo, Norway, Sept. 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Tom Little
Norway‘s Labour government failed to win backing for its 2026 draft budget by an end-November deadline but talks will resume in parliament to find a compromise over oil drilling and the wealth fund’s Israeli investments, a negotiator said on Monday.
The Norwegian parliament is due to vote on the budget on Friday, and Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere could be forced to call a vote of confidence if no agreement is reached by then, putting his minority government on the line.
The Labour Party narrowly won a second term in a September election, but the result left it reliant on four small left-wing parties to pass the budget, with only two of those, the agrarian Centre Party and the far-left Red Party, agreeing so far.
“It is surprising this is happening so soon after the election,” Jonas Stein, a political scientist at UiT the Arctic University of Norway, told Reuters.
“The Greens in particular had promised during the election that they would back Stoere as prime minister and now he could fall two-to-three months after the election.”
The climate-focused Green Party, which wants a gradual phaseout of the oil industry by 2040, walked out, as did the Socialist Left over its objections to investments by Norway‘s sovereign wealth fund in Israel.
“We must continue our work to secure a majority for this budget by Friday,” parliament’s finance committee Chair Tuva Moflag of Labour told public broadcaster NRK on Monday.
Stoere has said that Norway, Europe’s biggest supplier of gas and a major oil producer, should continue to explore for hydrocarbons to sustain the country’s biggest industry.
The government also objects to demands that Norway‘s $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund should divest from all Israeli firms, arguing that only companies involved in the alleged occupation of Palestinian territories should be excluded.
“Norwegian politics have become a bit more adversarial and a bit more polarized,” Johannes Bergh, a political scientist at the Oslo-based Institute for Social Research, told Reuters.
“It might be more comparable to what’s happening in countries like Belgium or the Netherlands, where the political landscape is very fragmented. It has become very fragmented here as well.”
Parliament is elected for a fixed four-year term, with the next vote due in 2029, making it difficult for parties on the right to challenge Stoere’s government. It is not possible to call early elections or dissolve parliament.
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South Koreans Arrested in Iran on Smuggling Charges, Seoul Says
People walk near a mural of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, amid the Iran-Israel conflict, in Tehran, Iran, June 23, 2025. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
South Korean nationals have been arrested in Iran on suspicion of smuggling, South Korea’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Monday, but declined to confirm the number of people arrested.
“Our diplomatic mission team in Iran has been communicating the matter with Iranian officials and will continue to provide necessary consular assistance to the Korean nationals,” the ministry said.
The ministry declined to confirm other details including their occupation or the exact nature of the charges.
Local Yonhap News separately reported two South Korean nationals were arrested, including one who works at a public institution.