A Republican congressman made an astonishingly tone-deaf video from inside an Auschwitz gas chamber

Concentration camp selfies are never a good idea, but Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) apparently didn't get the memo. The Louisiana lawmaker uploaded an ill-advised hand-held video of his visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Poland, in which he used the horrors of the Holocaust as a segue to promoting homeland security — all over a clichéd, mournful-sounding violin soundtrack.

Over the course of the five-minute video, Higgins attempts to express his "great sense of dread," apparently oblivious to the wildly inappropriate nature of his video. At one point, speaking from a gas chamber, Higgins details the way cyanide pellets were used to murder thousands of people, concluding, "This is why homeland security must be squared away, why our military must be invincible."

The Auschwitz Memorial responded to Higgins' video on Twitter:

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"I note the two final words in Hebrew — 'al sheket,'" one Twitter user responded, "which means 'in silence.'"