In Russia, there’s no business like Shoah-business

SKATING TO music from the Shoah-themed film and the sound of barking dogs and gunfire, the two Russian skaters in concentration camp uniforms gleefully cavorted on the ice. As the televised routine reached its denouement, the female skater stumbled as if shot, providing a ghastly end to what quickly became a highly controversial performance.

People around the world — including an Israeli government minister, celebrities and historians — were quick to protest after a video of the dance surfaced online on Sunday. They decried what many in the Jewish community saw as a trivialisation of the Holocaust in the name of entertainment. “Have you lost all sense of decency? Have you no shame? The Holocaust on ice, complete with a sound-track of barking dogs,” tweeted Shoah historian Deborah Lipstadt. Dancer Tatiana Navka, who is the wife of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskoiv, responded that the show was an expression of remembrance. “Our children need to know and remember that terrible time, which I hope, God willing, they will never know,” she wrote on Instagram. Ilya Averbukh, the choreographer for the routine, who is Jewish, called allegations of antisemitism “some kind of global madness”. The dance was only the latest in a series of similar incidents in Russia that have raised hackles in the West. Earlier this year, the Russian version of featured a man dressed