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Smiling Auschwitz selfie sparks Twitter outrage

A young woman on Twitter has received an overwhelming amount of backlash recently because of a cheerful selfie she took at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

“Selfie in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp,” wrote Breanna Mitchell, who tweeted the photo on June 20.

One month later, the picture, complete with smiley face emoticon in the caption, went viral and sparked outrage among Twitter users who made the photo a trending topic on Sunday.

“@PrincessBMM How can you be happy and smile in this pic? Do you not understand the horrors and murders that happened here? I’d be crying,” one Twitter user said in response to the selfie.

“The Auschwitz Concentration Camp Selfie. A new low in vanity,” another tweeted.

“@PrincessBMM @ianbhough Did you manage to take any of you laughing inside a gas chamber or maybe one with your head stuck in a cremator?” one user added.

Since Sunday, Mitchell’s original Auschwitz selfie has generated nearly 4,000 retweets and over 2,600 favorites, with many people actually defending Mitchell on the photo.

“Taking a smiling selfie at Auschwitz? Kinda disrespectful, even if unintended. Harassing teenager online because she did it? Not okay,” a user said.

“Y’all acting like the girl took a selfie with Hitler himself, chill,” another tweeted.

Mitchell has been very vocal on Twitter about her chipper appearance during her trip to the world’s largest World War II Nazi concentration camp.

“Omg I wish people would quit tweeting to, quoting, retweeting, and favoriting my picture of my smiling in Auschwitz Concentration Camp,” Mitchell tweeted.

“Like apparently is such a big deal that I smiled. Good Lord.”

Once the attention began to pour in, Mitchell seemed to be relishing her newfound notoriety, even retweeting more than 150 of her supporters.

“I’m famous yall,” she tweeted Sunday, in reference to a Business Insider article about her selfie.

Mitchell says she took the photo in remembrance of her father, who passed away a year ago, claiming to have studied the Holocaust with him for years, according to Newsday.

“The trip actually meant something to me and I was happy about it,” she tweeted.