Auschwitz
AuschwitziStock

An Israeli teenager has admitted to urinating on a memorial at the site of the former death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, Polish prosecutors on Monday said, adding that he is willing to pay a fine, according to AFP.

The 19-year-old committed the act in late March and was arrested the same day, according to Mariusz Slomka, prosecutor from the southern Polish city of Oswiecim.

"He confessed and over the course of the investigation expressed the wish to receive a fine of 5,000 zloty ($1,400)," he told AFP.

A guide from the museum at the site and several other people witnessed the act, according to Slomka, who added that nothing suggested the teenager had been under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

Under Polish law, this kind of offence normally calls for a fine or restriction of freedom, especially community service.

The memorial in question is located between the ruins of the two crematoriums at the former death camp set up by Nazi Germany after occupying Poland during World War II.

One million European Jews were killed by the Nazis at the camp between 1940 and 1945. More than 100,000 non-Jews also died at the death camp.

Auschwitz has been targeted by thieves and vandals several times in recent years. In the most dramatic theft, the "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign was stolen from the former death camp's historic gate in 2009. It was found days later, cut into pieces.

The Poles who stole it and the Swedish man who instigated them were sentenced to prison, and the sign was later restored.

In 2016, two British teenagers were caught stealing from Auschwitz while on a school trip.

In December, a Polish court gave a suspended one-year sentence to a 17-year-old American who was caught scratching his name into the barracks at Auschwitz.

In January, a Polish court jailed the organizers of a stunt that saw a dozen people take off their clothes at the death camp, before one of them slaughtered a lamb.