Bricks from the ruins of a crematorium at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp in Poland were seen being stuffed into the bags of two Hungarian tourists who, police said, admitted trying to steal them.
The 30-year-old woman and 36-year-old man were caught on Saturday in Oświęcim when another pair of foreign tourists saw them stuffing the bricks into a bag and notified security.
"The man and woman were charged with theft of a cultural asset. They both admitted to wrongdoing," said regional police press officer Mateusz Drwal.
"They explained that they had wanted to bring back a souvenir and didn't realise the consequences of their actions," he told the Polish news agency PAP.
The Hungarian tourists were each fined 1,500 zloty ($400, 350 euros) and handed a suspended sentence of one year in jail.
Auschwitz-Birkenau has become a symbol of Nazi Germany's genocide of European Jews, one million of whom were killed at the camp between 1940 to 1945.
More than 100,000 others including non-Jewish Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and anti-Nazi resistance fighters also died there.