‘Death camp gala’ sparks fury

A TURKISH filmmaker has apologised for recreating a concentration camp scene at the Istanbul premiere of his new spy thriller Çiçero.

The gala event for the film, which depicts the story of an Albanian-born Nazi spy, featured blue-and-white striped camp uniforms strewn across barbed wire and extras dressed to resemble Wehrmacht officers.

Photographs from last month’s premiere, which showed the film’s cast and crew walking past the installation in formal evening wear, triggered public outrage in Turkey.

Ę\QKT ĘL[KQRV_KMNQ ]QN Y[N\RMNW] of the Turkish Jewish Community, said it was a “disgrace” to stage a recreational event with a concentration camp theme.

“That misery [of the Holocaust] was not endured so you could decorate your gala,” journalist Ahmet Hakan wrote in a column for the daily newspaper Hürriyet.

“I call it crudeness, I call it vulgarity, I call it a disgrace, I call it cruelty, I call it a lack of consciousness, but I don’t think even that would account for what has been done here.”

;^\]KOK øNWN[XĔU^ KW ;> OX[ B^[key’s governing AK Party, tweeted: “There can be no explanation for using the massacre of millions of people in concentration camps, one of the most tragic and calamitous crimes in