Schoolboys fined for taking buttons from Auschwitz

TWO private schoolboys have been fined for picking up buttons and metal fragments from the ground in Auschwitz.

Marcus Dell and Ben Thompson were on a history trip with £15,000-a-year The Perse School, in Cambridge, to the Nazi camp in Poland and were being shown around a warehouse displaying belongings of murdered Jews.

The boys, who were 17 at the time of the offence in 2015, picked up objects from the ground that were not part of the display, including part of an old hair-cutting machine. They told the court in Krakow they had only picked up the items because they wanted to ask a guide about them.

They were initially charged with stealing goods of special importance, but experts said the items were not significant. They were instead found guilty of damaging a site of historical importance.

Judge Wojciech Kolanko said items found in the soil at the camp are collected twice a year and put in the display case.

The boys were fined £410 each and told to pay £1,230 each to the Memorial Foundation for the victims of Auschwitz.