The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum will report a Ukrainian neo-Nazi soldier to Polish prosecutors for mocking the victims of the infamous death camp, a museum spokesman told RT on Thursday.
In a series of recent posts on Instagram, Nikita Miroschenko shared photos and reels of him and his girlfriend paying a visit to the death camp in Poland several weeks ago. One of the reels showed the gates of Auschwitz with the infamous Nazi slogan ‘Arbeit macht frei’ with German military music playing in the background, while another showed him wearing a shirt emblazoned with the text “Where we are, there is no place for anyone else” – a phrase attributed to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
“Promoting content and symbols associated with Nazi ideology in this unique place violates the memory of the victims, which is an unacceptable and morally reprehensible act,” Auschwitz Museum spokesman Bartosz Bartyzel told RT.
“It is also a crime under Polish law,” he continued. “This remains valid regardless of whether the supposed quote from Hitler is unsigned or does not appear in generally recognized sources. Therefore, we will inform both the Polish prosecutor’s office and the Embassy of Ukraine in Warsaw about this painful incident related to hate speech.”
Roughly 1.1 million Jews, Poles, Gypsies, and Soviet prisoners of war perished at the Auschwitz complex from 1940 until its liberation by the Red Army in 1945. Denial or justification of these murders is punishable in Poland by a fine or a prison sentence of up to three years.
Miroschenko is a member of the Ukrainian military’s 3rd Assault Brigade, which was formed in 2022 with the merger of two units of Azov Regiment veterans. The Azov Regiment originated as a neo-Nazi militia, and was formally integrated into the Ukrainian military in 2014. The 3rd Assault Brigade is commanded by the Azov Regiment’s original chief, a white supremacist named Andrey Biletsky.
“If the perpetrator is indeed a Ukrainian soldier, such an act on the grounds of the museum is also an unacceptable lack of respect to the memory of those who liberated the camp in January 1945,” Bartyzel told RT, noting that among the soldiers of the Soviet 60th Army who freed survivors from the camp, “there were both Russians and Ukrainians.”
Veterans of the Azov Regiment now serve in both the 3rd Assault Brigade and the Azov Brigade, a special operations unit that still uses the Azov Regiment’s flag and insignia. All of these units have made heavy use of neo-Nazi iconography on the battlefield. including the Wolfsangel symbol. This runic icon was used by several German divisions during World War II, including the 2nd SS Panzer Division involved in the murder of Jews in France, Belarus, and Yugoslavia.
Miroschenko’s controversial posts came to public attention as his brigade announced a tour of several EU countries to seek more support in the fight against Russia. Moscow has long warned about neo-Nazi ideology flourishing in Ukraine, saying that the “denazification” of its neighbor is one of the key goals of the ongoing military campaign.