Officers used pens to mark 214 refugees, mostly Syrians, who were detained on a train yesterday at a border crossing from Austria and Hungary.

The measure has provoked anger because it recalls Nazi Germany's practice of writing numbers on concentration camp prisoners.

The controversy came as thousands of desperate migrants staged angry protests outside Budapest’s main international railway station today after Hungarian authorities refused to let them board trains bound for Western Europe. 

Alp Mehmet, vice-chairman of MigrationWatch, which campaigns for managed migration, told MailOnline: 'It is simply wrong and foolish.

'They are treating them in a way that could look like they are branding them or doing what happened to the Jews in Nazi Germany. 

'I can understand why people will be repulsed by this type of action. No one is suggesting they won't be treated well, but the sooner they stop this the better all around.'

Andrew Stroehlein, European Media Director of Human Rights Watch, tweeted a picture of an officer marking a migrant child and later wrote: 'What never stops amazing me are people who look at the Holocaust and think that it only holds lessons for Germans & Jews.'

Zuzana Candigliota, a lawyer with the Czech Human Rights League, added: 'There is no law allowing the police to mark people like this.' 

Czech interior ministry spokeswoman Lucie Novakova said the move was introduced because of the increasing number of children among the refugees.

'Our goal is to prevent the children from getting lost,' she added.

The measure was used with large groups of refugees to keep record of family members, according to Katerina Rendlova, spokeswoman for a unit of the Czech police dealing with foreigners.

'We also write the code of the train they have arrived on so that we know which country we should return them to within the readmission system.'

Unlike some other EU member states, Czech authorities maintain that migrants who enter the country without first having made an asylum request should be returned to the state from which they arrived, in line with the EU's Dublin Provision. 

The overwhelming majority of Czechs oppose hosting refugees, according to an August survey by local polling agency Focus in which 93 percent of respondents said they should be returned to their country of origin.

Rendlova said the refugees 'used to get the numbers on a piece of paper but they kept throwing them away'.

'They have agreed with the marking – they don't have a problem with this, they know it's in their interest.'  

But rights activists and lawyers cite legal and ethical concerns.

'I guess they agree because they believe the police officer has the right to do this,' said Candigliota.

Prague lawyer Marek Dufek added: 'I know it's difficult because the refugees have no documents.' 

(dailymail.co.uk)