“Perhaps the guards were told that, as a sight of respect for the camp, there is to be no singing, etc. Sometimes a dignified silence is best.”
I might agree if I hadn’t seen other people get away with being loud. When I visited in 2005 there was a tour bus full of French high school kids making all kinds of noise, laughing, goofing off, etc. No one said “boo” to them.
On another note, I was there with an unofficial guide who was showing me around and pointing things out. The official guides hounded us into silence because they weren’t getting a fee from me. Don’t think it was anti-Semitism, just greed.
That aside I have to say that most of the Poles I met were pretty cool people.