Viral On Social Media, Manager Denies Ukrainian Refugees Placed In Former Nazi Concentration Camp In Germany

The former Nazi concentration camp Sachsenhausen Memorial complex, Germany. (Wikimedia Commons/Aad van der Drift)

JAKARTA - The shocking news has gone viral on social media, saying that Ukrainian refugees due to the Russian invasion were reportedly placed in historical sites of former Nazi concentration camps in Germany.

Social media users said people who had fled the Ukraine war were being housed in a makeshift hotel at the Sachsenhausen Memorial near Berlin.

The claim was widely shared by the pro-Kremlin Telegram channel, as well as by some Twitter users in Germany, Italy, and Poland.

The management of the Sachsenhausen Memorial, once one of Germany's largest concentration camps, has dismissed the rumors as "fake".

Euronews has fact-checked these claims, finding the news circulating on social media to be false, as reported on July 18.

One photo circulating online claims that the barracks in a former concentration camp have been decorated with Ukrainian-colored banners that read "Welcome Home" in German.

Using an open source fact-checking tool to verify the image, Euronews found the photo had been digitally altered. Meanwhile, the alleged "welcome" banner was added artificially.

To note, the original photo of the Sachsenhausen Memorial barracks was first published on a German tourism website in 2019.

Meanwhile, there is no archival record that the Sachsenhausen Memorial has invited Ukrainian refugees to live on the land of the former concentration camp.

In a statement on social media, the memorial emphatically denied the allegations and said it would "take legal action against this forgery".

"We condemn the increasing use of fake news with references to Nazi history to carry out abusive propaganda. We are fighting this with science-based history education", it said.

It is not clear who is behind the misinformation and digitally altered images.

Separately, the United Nations Bansga said more than five million refugees have now fled Ukraine since the war broke out on February 24. Meanwhile, another seven million refugees are estimated to still be inside Ukraine alone.

This is not the first time there have been attempts to discredit Ukrainian refugees in Europe.

Last month, a viral video falsely claimed that Ukrainian refugees set fire to a house in Germany while trying to burn the Russian flag.