Auschwitz tourist faces backlash after complaining about cafe prices in TikTok video

A British tourist is facing backlash after complaining about prices at the Auschwitz cafe.

The woman, called Lynne but who posts under the name FreeSpirit666 on TikTok, took to social media to bemoan the price and quality of drinks at the restaurant adjoining the museum on the site of the former concentration camp in Poland.

In the video, which has been seen more than four million times, she said she and her daughter had paid £9 for a strawberry smoothie and a small bottle of lemonade, which tasted a “bit like Dettol”.

“Very expensive,” she assessed. “But the taxi from the station to here, which saved us a 25 minute walk, was £1.20. That was a bargain. So when you come to Auschwitz, bring some food and drink.”

The content creator also criticised the café’s lack of alternative milks, saying: “We fancied a coffee because we were early but they don’t do decaf or any milk other than real milk, so we gave that a miss.”

The camp at Auschwitz was set up in occupied Poland during the Second World War, with more than 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, dying in gas chambers or from starvation, cold and disease.

Commenters on the cafe video accused the poster of insensitivity, given the setting the cafe is in.

“Let’s not forget where we are,” one wrote. “This is a concentration camp where thousands died, not a 5 star restaurant experience.”

Another wrote: “I went to Auschwitz, I didn't take food and drink, and quite honestly, I didn't feel like eating and drinking, It wasn't entertainment for me. The last thing on my mind, was my comfort.”

In later videos, Lynne pushed back on mocking comments left on her post she said were “terribly disrespectful for the camp and the people that died there”.

She responded: “No-one died in the cafe. No-one died there. No-one was gassed there. I just had a drink there which is nowhere near the park... the camp entrance.”

“People are saying I shouldn’t moan about the price of the food and drink but why are they selling it?” she said in another video. “People have got to have drinks, haven’t they - some of those tours take ages.”

A spokesperson for the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum said the restaurant was operated by an external provider with prices clearly displayed.

“For us, the essential point remains that people come to the Auschwitz Memorial to learn about the history of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp, to confront the fate of its victims and to commemorate them,” they told The Times.

TripAdvisor was forced to remove an insensitive review of the museum itself in 2021 after initially saying it complied with submission guidelines.

The writer was eventually banned for saying they went to Auschwitz to “test the chamber” and describing the site as “fun for the family”.

And in 2023, the museum issued a warning after a visitor posted a “disrespectful” photo of themselves smiling next to the railway tracks into the camp.

“Pictures can hold immense emotional & documentation value for visitors. Images help us remember,” the museum’s social media page wrote.

“When coming to Auschwitz Museum visitors should bear in mind that they enter the authentic site of the former camp where over 1 million people were murdered. Respect their memory.”