Shortly after the incendiary claims were made, the official Auschwitz museum account tweeted that the pictures were "gross propaganda."
In a statement, Auschwitz said: “The use of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial for propaganda that lends credence to alleged Russophobia and strengthens theories about the need for denazification of Ukraine should be opposed by all thinking people worldwide.”
Since the beginning of the conflict earlier this year, Russia has attempted to invoke Nazism in various ways, saying that Ukraine was led by 'drug-addicted' Nazis. In May, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said that Hitler was part Jewish. When asked about how Russia was "De-nazifying" a country with a Jewish leader, he said: "I could be wrong, but Hitler also had Jewish blood. [That Zelensky is Jewish] means absolutely nothing. Wise Jewish people say that the most ardent anti-Semites are usually Jews."
Early on in the conflict, Russian forces bombed the area of Kyiv containing the Babyn Yar memorial, a monument to the massacre of the same name that's considered to be the first major massacre in the Soviet Union's "Holocaust of bullets."
