Website exposes millennials who take selfies at Holocaust memorial

Published January 19, 2017 10:28pm ET



Millennials taking selfies is a testament to how far the digital age has progressed. However, young people aren’t particularly cognizant of where or when it’s appropriate to hop in front of their smartphone. And it has become a problem at places commemorating history’s biggest atrocities.

Israeli satirist and author Shahak Shapira started a website called Yolocaust exposing people posting goofy, playful photos at the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, Germany.

According to his site, Shapira “explores our commemorative culture by combining selfies from the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin with footage from Nazi extermination camps.”

If you scroll through each photo, someone’s selfie will be superimposed over a pile of murdered Jews from real Holocaust footage. The images are graphic and disturbing, but then again, so are these

Shapira aggregated photos from Facebook, Instagram, Tinder and Grindr. He even included how many “Likes” to show how well they performed on social media.

According to Shapira, roughly 10,000 people visit the memorial dedicated to the 6 million Jews who were brutally murdered in Europe by the Nazi regime. In some of the photos, some of the visitors are jumping, skating, or biking on the 2,711 concrete slabs.

Of course, Yolocaust isn’t meant to teach people how to behave, but is meant to show how disrespectful some people can be.

In his FAQ section, Shapira writes for those who regret posting a selfie of them at the memorial:

“I’m on one of the pictures and suddenly regret having uploaded it to the internet. Can you remove it?”
Yes. Just send an email to [email protected]