Picture this: memorial site snaps remade

TOURISTS VISITING Berlin’s Holocaust memorial may think twice before taking playful selfies at the landmark, after an artist launched a website highlighting inappropriate behaviour at the tribute site.

Israeli satirist Shahak Shapira’s site overlays the holiday pictures taken at the memorial on top of real images from the Shoah, including pictures of piles of bodies in death camps.

The “Yolocaust” project — a play on the acronym for “you only live once” — has become a viral hit since going live a week ago.

The memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe in Germany’s capital city has regularly been the site of controversy, with visitors doing yoga, making antisemitic gestures and acting inappropriately on its tomb-like structures since it opened in 2005.

Mr Shapira’s project aims to shame such behaviour. In a simple technique, visitors to his site hover their mouse over the pictures to see a doctored versionappear,withthesubjectsof thecon- temporary pictures shown against the backdrop of gruesome Shoah scenes.

Mr Shapira, who lives in Berlin, said the website generated 500,000 hits in its first 12 hours.

A description on the website reads: “No historical event compares to the Holocaust. It’s up to you how to behave at a memorial site that marks the death of six million people.”

The artist said he intended to “explore our commemorative culture by combining selfies from the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin with footage from Nazi extermination camps.”

The selfies were found onFacebook,Instagram, TinderandGrindr.Comments,hashtags and “likes” that were posted with the selfies are also included.

Mr Shapira concluded: “To many, the grey stelae symbolise gravestones for thesixmillionJewsthatweremurdered and buried in mass graves, or the grey ash to which they were burned to in the death camps.” Tourists pose at the memorial ( top) and ( bottom) reworked by Shapira

Selfies were found on Facebook, Tinder and Grindr’