A network model poses at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin (influencersinthewild)
The "Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe" (called in German Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas) also known as the Holocaust Memorial, is a memorial that was established in Berlin in 2005 to commemorate the Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust.
It is located on the eastern side of the city, a little south of the Brandenburg Gate, in front of the US Embassy in Berlin, where Adolf Hitler's chancellor's office was located during the Third Reich. The monument covers an area of 19,000 square meters and includes 2,711 concrete blocks, arranged in a pattern Squares on top of a plane which is sunken in the center, reminiscent of an arrangement of tombstones in a cemetery.
The number of stones is the same as the number of pages of the Babylonian Talmud.
The concrete cubes are 2.38 m long, 0.95 m wide, and at different heights, between 0.2 m and 4.8 m.
The placement of the cubes was designed to create an atmosphere of discomfort and confusion.
The location chosen for the memorial site, near a business area, where several embassies are also concentrated,
Visitors to the site wander through its narrow passageways, mostly confused and overwhelmed - but some, apparently, also feel a little flirtatious and sexy.
At least, that's the only explanation they found in the Jewish-American magazine The Forward, for the fact that the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin has become a popular background for photos on Tinder profiles.
A collection of Tinder profile photos went viral on Twitter and Reddit last year, showing dozens of women posing at the Holocaust Memorial.
Some of the photos are artistic and careful shots of people looking off into the distance as they ponder life.
In other photos, the subjects are smiling, sitting cross-legged on the pillars, doing parkour or just striking a pose for the camera.
berlin tinder is wild pic.twitter.com/Xzi9dWhF6K
— francis wolf (@francisxwolf) November 10, 2022
This is not a new phenomenon, there are countless articles about it, along with pages on social networks that collect "Holocaust selfies" photos taken in concentration camps, ghettos and museums, there are also artists who leveraged the phenomenon for projects and even the viral post about the Tinder photos is five years old;
Just reposted.
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Yolocaust (@yolo.caust_)
Which begs the question: is this still happening?
The forward reporter opened a Tinder profile and changed the settings so that she could search among Berliners.
After many hours of searching and changing settings - she came across very few such images.
She assumed that maybe people saw the posts on the subject and downloaded their Holocaust photos, or maybe education about the Holocaust has really improved in recent years and they felt guilty (or maybe there are still people posting photos on Tinder with the memorial, and she just didn't see them).
But even if people mostly stopped putting their selfie from the Holocaust memorial on Tinder - they still take it - and post it on Instagram.
When you search Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe on Instagram you find tens of thousands of photos under the tag.
They range from respectable to silly - some of them from just a few days ago - like a group of young women squeezed into the narrow passage while grinning and sticking out their tongues or a woman with botox in her lips and a deep cleavage.
Even the photos with the serious captions about the importance of remembering the Holocaust are carefully chosen so that the person photographed in them looks hot - but also serious.
This is the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin.
Don't do this.
pic.twitter.com/2X1OIAe0qq
— influencersinthewild (@influencersitw) October 30, 2021
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Ghazaleh Farhang (@ghazale.farhang)
Is it really that bad to post the Holocaust memorial on Tinder?
Reactions, both on Twitter and Reddit, to the Tinder photo collection were mixed.
Many people were horrified and called the phenomenon disrespectful.
They noted that around the monument there are signs clarifying how to behave there and forbidding noise, jumping and climbing, bringing pets to the place, drinking, smoking and riding bicycles.
But many pointed out that the architect of the monument in Berlin, Peter Eisenman, knew that people would not always come to it in a somber mood.
"People will have a picnic in the field. Children will play catch there. There will be models in fashion shoots there and films will be shot there," he said in an interview with "Der Spiegel" in 2005 on the occasion of the opening of the monument.
"What can I say? This is not a holy place."
The Berlin Memorial isn't the only place where people seem more focused on posing than respecting history.
Selfies in the Auschwitz concentration camp are so common that the Auschwitz Museum was forced to post a tweet asking people to stop posing for "artistic pictures" on the train tracks that brought the trains full of Jews to their deaths by gas.
The Facebook page (which has been closed for the time being) called "With my beauties in Auschwitz", compiled selfies taken in several concentration camps, which featured mainly Israeli teenagers on school trips and "life journeys".
When you come to @AuschwitzMuseum remember you are at the site where over 1 million people were killed.
Respect their memory.
There are better places to learn how to walk on a balance beam than the site which symbolizes the deportation of hundreds of thousands to their deaths.
pic.twitter.com/TxJk9FgxWl
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) March 20, 2019
From the Facebook page "With my beauties in Auschwitz" (photo: screenshot, Facebook screenshot)
The phenomenon is not unique to the Holocaust - countless selfies of people at the memorial to commemorate the dead in the terrorist attack on September 11 or at Pearl Harbor appear online.
They are also photographed with memorials to the soldiers killed in Vietnam or the world wars.
They even take selfies at funerals - quite often.
Is it appropriate?
Is it even a fight worth fighting in our age?
It is difficult to say what is the proper way to deal with death.
The Holocaust, of course, is not just death but something cruel and much bigger, but it is still difficult to know what to focus on - the cruelty of the Nazis or the resistance of the Jews?
In sorrow for those who were lost or in the joy of life of the survivors?
Should we look to the future or focus on the past?
The author of the article mentions that "monuments are not museums. They are art. Not history. They are meant to evoke emotions, not convey information. Maybe people who feel sexy in the Holocaust memorial are missing the point, or maybe the way to deal with the monument has changed over time."
"Selfies are part of the cultural experience today and the virtualization of the world," Gunter Morsch, the former director of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp memorial and museum, told ABC.
"In the virtual world, people try to incorporate an authentic place as part of their image and this is actually something positive."
In conclusion, the author of the article writes that "the Israeli youth who take pictures with their national flag at the Holocaust sites may be smiling, but the message is clear: they can smile and take pictures in Auschwitz because they see themselves as shaping a new and proud Jewish future. Even Eisenman said that he imagined that his memorial stones might someday see As "foundation stones for a new society". Life is intoxicating to move forward after tragedies, no matter how big they may be. People continue to jump and climb and run, and yes - also go on dates and take sexy pictures."
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