MEAWW.COM / NEWS / HUMAN INTEREST

TikTokers torched for posing as Holocaust victims in new trend, Internet calls it antisemitic 'trauma porn'

Some donned striped outfits meant to resemble prison uniform while others covered their faces with dirt and sported the Star of David

Content creators on TikTok are being accused of antisemitism after a new trend sees young people pretending to be Holocaust victims in heaven while talking about how they died in Nazi concentration camps. As part of the trend, some TikTokers donned striped outfits meant to resemble the prison uniform that Jews were forced to wear in death camps. Others covered their faces with 'dirt' and stitched the Star of David onto their clothes. Some of them even used images from Auschwitz, where more than one million people were suffocated to death in gas chambers.

The clips, as expected, infuriated many people online, including Jewish communities. One woman even said the content was being used as "trauma porn" to garner likes. "Our obsession with trauma porn has only motivated a desire to dramatize these narratives," Brianna, an Ashkenazi Jewish teenager from Los Angeles, told Wired. "Most creators are doing [these videos] to hop on to a trend so they can get likes and exposure [but they are] ill-informed and woefully ignorant."

"These kinds of trends are so normalized these days, there’s also a level of shock value content which I think is outdated and in bad taste," she added. "This shock value further desensitizes viewers to this type of behavior and normalizes this type of harmful content." Several social media users took to various platforms to voice their anger. "Right. Now can we please STOP making Holocaust trends on TikTok? It’s straight-up antisemitism and you all let it slide," one tweeted.

"I’m sad this has become something people think is okay to practice their makeup and acting abilities with," another added.

That said, some creators defended their videos saying they were only meant to be educational. "I’ve always been interested in the history of the Holocaust and just wanted to make a creative video informing people about it on TikTok," one influencer said on condition of anonymity, per the Daily Mail. "It was never intended to be offensive."

Meanwhile, another content creator told Wired that she wanted to "spread awareness" about the holocaust as her own family members had spent time in concentration camps. "I’m very motivated and captivated by the Holocaust and the history of World War II," McKayla, 15, from Florida, told the magazine. "I have ancestors who were in concentration camps and have actually met a few survivors from Auschwitz camp. I wanted to spread awareness and share out to everyone the reality behind the camps by sharing my Jewish grandmother’s story."

But the awareness campaign apparently backfired and was criticized by many. "Imitating Holocaust experiences dishonors the memory of the victims, is offensive to survivors and trivializes the history," Diane Saltzman, director of survivor affairs at the Holocaust Museum in the US, told Insider.

Meanwhile, 21-year-old Taylor Hillman, a deaf Jewish creator who shared her own take on the trend, said many TikTokers created such content without investing much thought in an attempt to go viral. “I personally feel, in the context of the Holocaust, videos about it should be carefully thought out,” she told Wired. “There are many young creators who range from about 12 to 16 that use the Holocaust trope for fame. They know it will get views and make them more popular, but most of the time they are not Jewish and it feels as though they are mocking the actual victims of the Holocaust.”