Elon Musk
Months after supporting an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, X's CEO went to the site of the Nazi death camp
Associated Press
Monday, January 22, 2024, 5:02 p.m. GMT
Elon Musk, who supports anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and has been criticized for allowing anti-Semitic messages on X, formerly Twitter, visited the site of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau on Monday.
Musk's visit to the most notorious site of Holocaust horrors came ahead of his scheduled appearance later in the day at a conference on anti-Semitism organized by the European Jewish Association in the nearby Polish city of Krakow.
Musk was photographed visiting the Birkenau site with Daily Wire podcaster Ben Shapiro, who was also scheduled to attend the EJA conference. Birkenau is a barbed-wire-fenced village near Oswiecim in southern Poland, where wooden barracks for prisoners and the ruins of a gas chamber remain as evidence of Nazi crimes and where there is a memorial to the victims. International ceremonies take place there every year.
“Before coming to the European Jewish Association conference, Elon Musk participated in a private visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau with EJA Chairman Rabbi Menachem Margolin, Ben Shapiro and Holocaust survivor Gidon Lev. “Musk laid a wreath at the Wall of Death and attended a brief memorial ceremony and service at the Birkenau Memorial,” EJA said in an email.
Musk was scheduled to discuss anti-Semitism online with Shapiro at the conference in Krakow, which took place ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27.
The billionaire has been accused by the Anti-Defamation League, a prominent Jewish civil rights organization, and others of condoning anti-Semitic messages on the platform formerly known as Twitter since purchasing it in 2022. In November, he sparked an outcry, including from the White House, when he later apologized for the comment, calling it the “stupidest” post he had ever written.
Several major brands, including Disney and IBM, stopped advertising on the platform last year after liberal advocacy group Media Matters found that their ads were running alongside Nazi content and white nationalist posts. X has since sued Media Matters, saying the Washington-based nonprofit created the report to “drive advertisers off the platform and destroy X Corp.”
More than 1.1 million people were murdered by the Nazis and their henchmen in Auschwitz during World War II. Most of those killed were Jews, but victims also included Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, queer people and others. In total, around 6 million European Jews died during the Holocaust. When the Soviets liberated the camp, they found about 7,000 survivors.
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