By Bhavini Srivastava
Shahak Shapira, a 28-year-old German?Israeli artist, launched a satirical art project called Yolocaust in January this year. It aimed to take a jibe at the ubiquitous selfie culture and the carefree slang of this generation ? You Only Live Once (YOLO).
[su_pullquote align=”right”]In the pictures, visitors are seen somersaulting and frolicking around mass graves at the Berlin Memorial.[/su_pullquote]
As part of the project, he collected selfies and personal pictures of tourists at the Berlin Memorial from Facebook, Instagram and Grindr. He then superimposed them against archival footages of Jew captives. The artist used these selfies in his art without their prior permission. However, he placed a note at the bottom with his email for requests for removing the images from the internet.In the pictures, visitors are seen somersaulting and frolicking around mass graves at the Berlin Memorial. It is close to the German Parliament and the Brandenburg Gate and a veritable symbol of European peace and unity.
By way of Yolocaust, Shapira catches the bull by its horns. He conveys a solemn message to the visitors, saying, “I’m watching you. Stop doing it.”
A mockery of the past by Yolocaust
The project was articulately purported to coincide with the January 27th International Holocaust Remembrance Day which marked the 72nd anniversary of Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps liberation, the largest Nazi death camp.
The hornets nest was kicked and a media maelstrom was created thereafter which resonated at a global level from the very moment it was launched. Even decades after the World War II, anti-Semitism and Nazi persecution remains to be a sensitive topic for Germany. It was this Yolocaust project which has again refurbished the debate how the country perceives itself in the world.
Around the same time, Björn Höcke, a politician from the rightwing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, exhorted the country to step out of the grim shadow of Nazi rule. Höcke said, [su_quote]Until now, our mental state continues to be that of a totally defeated people. We, Germans, are the only people in the world that have planted a monument of shame in the heart of their capital.[/su_quote]
Never too late to sensitise
Each of the twelve persons whose selfies were presented by Shapira at his webpage clearly learnt their bitter lesson. They have apologised profusely. One of the mails has been shared at the website along with the impassioned reaction of the viewers. The chilling photos were taken down from the Yolocaust.de and the contented artist touted his project a roaring success.
[su_quote]”It’s about fighting ignorance, making people realize where they are, what this place stands for”[/su_quote] said Shapira decisively who had himself lost half his family in the Nazi genocide.
Lessons that must never be forgotten
This project was a very brazen attempt to denigrate people into bowing down in shame. Some of the pictures are exceedingly eerie. There is the one in which the selfie?taker is photoshopped with a mound of mangled corpses of Jews; another when the emaciated Jews are peering into the mobile phone for that perfect selfie.
What happens at such poignant sites is that the visitors who are not directly affected by the gall and mayhem of the Nazi persecution get transported to a film set. They become overwrought with excitement to be standing at the center, which has been the subject of innumerable movies and documentaries.
Surely, the concentration camp is not a sacred place. However, it is not a promenade either. Visitors should bear in mind the austerity and reverence that the site demands.
These memorials are erected and maintained as a constant reminder of the gruesome past of the world so that history is not repeated. They also stand tall to ensure that the current and future generations do not collapse into the same depths of depravity. They force the galloping youth to halt for a minute and not get carried away in the age of advancement. We should always remember what we slain and what we conquered yesterday to reach this place of luxury today.
Featured image courtesy: Truth Code
[su_note note_color=”#d2eaf6″]Fresh insights delivered to your phone each morning. Download our Android App today![/su_note]