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Teens on TikTok masquerade as Holocaust victims, drawing ire of Jewish users

Video creators on social network don make-up, costumes, act out fictionalized stories in trend; critic calls series ‘ill informed and woefully ignorant’

By TOI staff 22 August 2020, 5:36 pm 2 Edit
The icon for TikTok. (AP Photo/File)
The icon for TikTok. (AP Photo/File)

Young people on the social network platform TikTok are pretending to be Holocaust victims in heaven in short videos, shocking some Jewish users on the platform.

In most of the clips, young women and teens act out a fictionalized story of a victim in the afterlife, donning costumes and make-up meant to show bruises and burn marks on their faces.

The videos nearly always mention Auschwitz and often use the Bruno Mars song “Locked out of Heaven” as a soundtrack.

The clips have garnered tens of thousands of views and positive reactions on the network.

The series of videos is part of a larger TikTok trend of point-of-view videos, where users of the video platform act out a fictional situation.

TikTok declined to comment on the trend, but it apparently does not violate any of its guidelines because it does not qualify as hate speech, Wired reported.

One of the creators of the videos told the news site: “I wanted to spread awareness and share out to everyone the reality behind the camps by sharing my Jewish grandmother’s story.”

It was unclear whether most of the creators were Jewish.

A Jewish user from Los Angeles called the trend, “ill informed and woefully ignorant.”

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