Holocaust survivors furious after naked game of tag in Nazi gas chamber

  • 01/12/2017

Warning: This video contains content which may disturb some people.

Holocaust survivors are outraged by a film showing a game of naked tag inside the gas chamber at a former Nazi concentration camp.

They're demanding answers from Poland's leaders over who allowed the video to be shot.

The film, called Game of Tag, was made in 1999 by the artist Artur Żmijewski and exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Krakow in 2015.

But it was only this year the location of the video was discovered. It was at Stutthof camp, in German-occupied Poland, where more than 65,000 people were killed.

The Center Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and other groups sent Polish President Andrzej Duda a letter calling for action.

"It's really outrageous," Efraim Zuroff, the Wiesenthal Center's chief Nazi hunter, told the BBC.

"I hope the Polish President will put in place regulations to make sure stuff like this doesn't happen again.

"It was banned in Germany, Estonia took in down when we contacted them. In Poland, for some reason, which lost 6 million people - 3 million Jews and 3 million Poles - they didn't get it."

The video was part of an exhibition called Poland - Israel - Germany: The experience of Auschwitz, focusing on the former Nazi death camp's impact on public discussion.

"The film Berek [Game of Tag] was made in 1999," the video's description reads.

"In it, a group of people play a kid's game. They are naked, they run around, they laugh a lot, but they are also very serious. 

"They know where they are - in the gas chamber of a former Nazi extermination camp." 

But the activists say the video trivialises the Holocaust and the suffering it caused.

"It is the most disgusting thing I've seen in a long time," Mr Zuroff said in 2015.

"It is just revolting, and a total insult to the victims and anyone with any sense of morality or integrity."

Newshub.