SBS NEWS
Shami Sivasubramanian
The gaming world has had a long history of Holocaust-themed games, like ‘Beyond Castle Wolfenstein’ in 1984 where players plot to kill Hitler and ‘Sonderkammando’ in 1992 which exacts a bloody revenge against SS officers from within a death camp.
But a new app, developed by students at a vocational training school in Zaragoza, Spain, is the latest to make light of the Holocaust, and worse still, lacks the Anti-Nazi sentiment behind several of its predecessors.
Called ‘Campo di Auschwitz’ which translates to ‘Auschwitz Camp’, the Android smartphone game invites users to “live like a real Jew in Auschwitz”. Though that might not appear completely incriminating in and of itself, the developers have admitted the game was created as a parody for entertainment.
The app, which was launched this month, was removed from the Google Play store only this Monday after it had been downloaded thousands of times. Italian paper ‘La Repubblica’ was the first to report on the app and its shutdown.
Naturally, the Jewish community is outraged. Dr Dvir Abramovich, Chairman of the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission here in Australia, spoke to The Feed to share his organisation’s view on the app. He has not played the game himself.
“The developers of this sick app crossed so many red lines I stopped counting. The Holocaust should never be cynically exploited and reduced into a game for shock value, profit and entertainment,” he told The Feed.
But could a Holocaust-themed game be all bad? Perhaps living “like a real Jew” could be an immersive experience for those who aren’t connected to the Holocaust. Maybe an app, though not this one, could teach the younger generation about what it was like to live in a concentration camp.
Though Dr Abramovich believes it’s a dangerous line to cross, he agrees there is a place for technology in teaching young people about the Holocaust. There are already some educational apps out there. However, they do not make light of concentration camps.
“Yes, there are several apps that are educationally-oriented that can introduce this incomprehensible and painful topic in a sensitive and informative way. Some examples: Yad Vashem mobile app; The United States Holocaust Museum’s mobile app; Auschwitz: A Tale of Wind, Faces of the Holocaust; Holocaust Stories; Shadows of Shoah; 70 Voices: Victims, Perpetrators and Bystanders; and Brisko: A True Tale of Survival.”
“The last thing we want is for young people to learn about the horrors and terrors of the concentration camps through such trivialising and demeaning apps.”