The Holocaust and social media

The representation of the Holocaust on social media has been a subject of scholarly inquiry[1] and media attention.[2]

Tourist taking a photograph of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin.

Selfies at Holocaust memorial sites
A young man taking a selfie at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

Some visitors take selfies at Holocaust memorials, which has been the subject of controversy. In 2018, Rhian Sugden, a British model, received criticism after posting a selfie at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin with the caption "ET phone home". She later removed the caption but defended taking the photograph.[3] Other celebrities have also been criticised for photographs at the Berlin memorial, including Indian actress Priyanka Chopra[4] and US politician Pete Buttigieg, whose husband posted a photograph of him at the memorial on a personal social media account.[5]

The Israeli artist and satirist Shahak Shapira set up the website yolocaust.de in 2017 to expose people who take inappropriate selfies at the Holocaust memorial in Berlin. Shapira went through thousands of selfies posted to social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Tinder, and Grindr, choosing the twelve that he found most offensive. When the images were moused over, the website replaces the memorial backdrop with black and white images of Nazi victims. "Yolocaust" is a portmanteau of "Holocaust" and YOLO, an acronym for "you only live once". The website went viral, receiving 1.2 million views in the first 24 hours after its launch.[6][7] Shapira honored requests to take down all of the photographs, which he had used without permission, and the website remains with only a textual documentation of the project. In an analysis of comments by Internet users on the project, Christoph Bareither estimated that 75% were positive. However, the memorial's architect, Peter Eisenman, criticized the website.[8]

In his 2018 book Postcards from Auschwitz, Grinnell professor Daniel P. Reynolds defends the practice of selfie-taking at Holocaust sites.[9] In 2019, the Auschwitz Museum requested that visitors not take inappropriate selfies, although the museum's staff acknowledged that other visitors take selfies in a thoughtful and respectful manner, which they did not criticize.[10]

In an academic paper, Gemma Commane and Rebekah Potton analyze the use of Instagram to share tourist photographs at Holocaust sites and conclude that "Instagram encourages conversation and empathy, keeping the Holocaust visible in youth discourses". According to their analysis, most images are tagged with respectful hashtags such as #tragic, #remembrance, and #sadness. The Auschwitz museum has an official Instagram account, auschwitzmemorial, which it uses to share selected appropriate Instagram posts. However, the image feed for the hashtag "Auschwitz" includes potentially offensive images such as an image of "Nazi Vs. Jews #beerpong". This image, according to the authors, expresses "mockery and contempt" for Holocaust victims. They also document offensive memes using images of Holocaust atrocities and shared on Instagram.[11] Some social media users post in order to criticize what they see as inappropriate behavior at Holocaust sites, with one commenting, "Taking photos posing next to razor wire, selfies with victim’s hair in the background, and even group shots in front of the crematoria had to be seen to be believed."[12]

Assessment of tourism
Main article: Holocaust tourism

Social media posts have been used by researchers to analyze the phenomenon of Holocaust-related tourism.[12]

Social media groups

People have created groups on Facebook to discuss issues related to the Holocaust. One paper analyses two such groups, "The Holocaust and My Family" and "The Descendants of the Victims and Survivors of the Holocaust" in which people engage in collective trauma processing.[13]

Eva.stories

In 2019, Israeli high-tech entrepreneur Mati Kochavi created a fictitious Instagram account for Eva Heyman, a Hungarian-Jewish girl who died in the Holocaust. The project met with mixed reception. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the project, saying that it "exposes the immense tragedy of our people through the story of one girl".[14][15][16]

Holocaust denial

The issue of Holocaust denial on social media has also attracted attention. In October 2020, Facebook reversed its policy and banned Holocaust denial from the platform. Founder Mark Zuckerberg had previously argued that such content should not be banned on free speech grounds.[17][18]

See also

References
  1. Adriaansen, Robbert-Jan (2020). "Picturing Auschwitz. Multimodality and the attribution of historical significance on Instagram". Infancia y Aprendizaje, Journal for the Study of Education and Development. 43 (3): 652–681. doi:10.1080/02103702.2020.1771963.; Fagen, Erica (2019). Hashtag Holocaust: Negotiating Memory in the Age of Social Media (PhD thesis). UMass Amherst.; Pfanzelter, Eva (2015). "At the crossroads with public history: mediating the Holocaust on the Internet". Holocaust Studies. 21 (4): 250–271. doi:10.1080/17504902.2015.1066066.; Lundrigan, Meghan (2020). "#Holocaust #Auschwitz". A Companion to the Holocaust. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. pp. 639–655. ISBN 978-1-118-97049-2.
  2. "Tweeting the Holocaust: The perils and perks of using social media to remember the Shoah". Haaretz.com. Retrieved 24 October 2020.
  3. "Glamour model Rhian Sugden criticised for posting Holocaust Memorial selfie". The Independent. 5 December 2018. Retrieved 24 October 2020.
  4. Bhattacharya, Ananya. "Priyanka Chopra broke the unspoken rule of taking selfies at the Holocaust Memorial". Quartz India. Retrieved 24 October 2020.
  5. Relman, Eliza (November 18, 2019). "Pete Buttigieg is facing criticism for an Instagram photo of him posing at the Berlin Holocaust memorial". Business Insider. Retrieved 24 October 2020.
  6. "'Yolocaust': How should you behave at a Holocaust memorial?". BBC News. 20 January 2017. Retrieved 24 October 2020.
  7. "Satirist Takes Berlin Holocaust Memorial Selfie-Takers To Task". NPR.org. Retrieved 24 October 2020.
  8. Bareither, Christoph (2020). "Difficult heritage and digital media: 'selfie culture' and emotional practices at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe". International Journal of Heritage Studies: 1–16. doi:10.1080/13527258.2020.1768578.
  9. Lebovic, Matt. "Defending Auschwitz selfies, a new book unpacks Holocaust tourism". www.timesofisrael.com. Retrieved 24 October 2020.
  10. "When a selfie goes too far: How Holocaust memorial sites around Europe combat social media disrespect". ABC News. Retrieved 24 October 2020.
  11. Commane, Gemma; Potton, Rebekah (2019). "Instagram and Auschwitz: a critical assessment of the impact social media has on Holocaust representation". Holocaust Studies. 25 (1–2): 158–181. doi:10.1080/17504902.2018.1472879.
  12. Wight, A. Craig (2020). "Visitor perceptions of European Holocaust Heritage: A social media analysis". Tourism Management. 81. doi:10.1016/j.tourman.2020.104142.
  13. Menyhért, Anna (2017). "Digital Trauma Processing in Social Media Groups: Transgenerational Holocaust Trauma on Facebook". The Hungarian Historical Review. 6 (2): 355–376. ISSN 2063-8647.
  14. Kershner, Isabel (30 April 2019). "A Holocaust Story for the Social Media Generation". The New York Times. Retrieved 24 October 2020.
  15. "Instagram Holocaust diary Eva.Stories sparks debate in Israel". the Guardian. 8 May 2019. Retrieved 24 October 2020.
  16. "What if you could Instagram the Holocaust? A question sparks controversy". ABC News. Retrieved 24 October 2020.
  17. "Facebook Bans Holocaust Denial, Reversing Earlier Policy". NPR.org. Retrieved 24 October 2020.
  18. "Facebook bans Holocaust denial, distortion posts". AP NEWS. 12 October 2020. Retrieved 24 October 2020.
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