Newsweek

Yolocaust: The Holocaust Memorial Selfies That Vanished

Shahak Shapira’s “Yolocaust” project shocked viewers and then vanished, like performance art for the internet age.
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe consists of 2,711 charcoal-gray rectangular pillars, which rise from the ground and form a tight grid through which visitors can wander. A recent project by Shahak Shapira, Yolocaust, called out those who snap selfies and take silly photos at the memorial.
2-3-17 Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

The proliferation of selfies taken at Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and posted to social media pissed off Shahak Shapira, an Israeli Jew who moved to Germany with his mom and brother at age 14.

“I thought it was kind of douchey. Douchey and ignorant,” he says. “People obviously didn’t give a shit about where they were. Didn’t invest any thought. To do yoga or juggle pink balls at a memorial that marks the deaths of 6 million Jews?”

A backdrop to countless artsy photo poses, the memorial to those 6 million who perished under the Nazis’ brutal regime is not nearly as explicit about its subject as its name

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