02 August 2007
A group of ultra-Orthodox Jews resorted to breaking into the site of the former Nazi concentration camp Majdanek. The group was trying to gain access after visiting hours to what is now a museum. A bus with 35 Chassidic Jews from Israel and the United States who were coming from Ukraine to Poland arrived at the museum after 6 p.m., the end of visiting hours. Some of the group members unhinged the gate and removed a padlock on the door of one of the barracks, according to Polish media reports. “The entire incident was a misunderstanding,” Lublin police spokesman Witold Laskowski told Poland's TVN24 news channel, who said the visitors apologized for their behavior. “The Jews agreed to cover the costs of the damage of about US$ 400 and will shortly continue their trip.”
"I have worked here for 12 years, the museum is visited by 80,000 visitors annually, but I have never seen anybody breaking in to visit the place before," Grzegorz Plewik, deputy director of the museum, told the PAP news agency. Some 250,000 to 360,000 people, mostly Jews, were killed by the Nazis at Majdanek, which is on the outskirts of the city of Lublin.
