A US congressman has apologised for recording a video while visiting the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.
Clay Higgins, a first-term House Republican and former police officer, produced an edited, five-minute video of himself touring parts of the Nazi-era camp and narrating in somber tones, including inside one of the former gas chambers.
"The guards would drop zyklon, cyanide gas from above, through hatches," Higgins said from inside the chamber.
"It's hard to walk away from gas chambers and ovens without a very sober feeling of commitment, unwavering commitment, to make damn sure that the United States of America is protected from the evils of the world," Higgins said.
The video was criticized by some as being political.
The Auschwitz Memorial tweeted a stern objection: "Everyone has the right to personal reflections. However, inside a former gas chamber, there should be mournful silence. It's not a stage."
Higgins said he filmed the "Auschwitz message with great humility" and in "reverent homage" to the estimated 1.1 million people murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
"However, my message has caused pain to some whom I love and respect. For that, my own heart feels sorrow," he said, offering a "sincere apology" and announcing his video has been removed.
Steven Goldstein, executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, called the video "disgusting beyond description."
"He never refers specifically to mass murder of the Jewish people at Auschwitz," nor uses the word Holocaust, Goldstein added.
Poland's chief rabbi also condemned a US congressman for recording a video inside a gas chamber at the former Nazi-German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, calling it inappropriate activity at a memorial site.
"This is a place to be quiet. This is a place to meditate, to think -- not a place to make videos and to make statements," Rabbi Michael Schudrich said of the site located in the southern city of Oswiecim.
"And certainly the idea of using Auschwitz and the gas chamber to express a political point of view is very disturbing to me," he told AFP.
It is not the first time Higgins, from Louisiana, has courted controversy.
In June, following deadly terror strikes in London, he said radicalized Islamic suspects should be hunted and killed.
"For the sake of all that is good and righteous. Kill them all," he said on Facebook.
Share
