In Memory Studies, Kate Douglas (2017) suggests we accept than condemn selfie-taking at memorial sites. Her proposal clashes with Shahak Shapira and his 2017 project, ‘Yolocaust.’ Collecting selfies taken at the Berlin Holocaust Memorial, Shapira overlay their backgrounds with the aftermath of death camps. In BBC’s article, ‘Yolocaust: How should you behave at a Holocaust memorial?’ (Gunter, 2017), they include a snippet of two smiling teen girls posing against heaps of emaciated bodies. Shapira’s opinion rings clear: selfies taken at memorials disregard the sufferings of millions. His perception aligns with traditional cultural norms where tribute is paid through silence and self-reflection; selfies specifically are criticized as narcissistic and a shallow engagement at best (Douglas, 2017: 3).

To Douglas, dark-selfies are how youths connect with historical tragedies, by implanting themselves in traumascapes and using social media to share their experiences (p.4). Douglas’s view holds insightful value, but in ‘Yolocaust’, it is difficult to agree when seeing original captions such as, ‘Jumping on dead Jews’. Instead of tribute, victims are disrespected in favour of tasteless jokes. Many of Yolocaust’s 2.5 million+ viewers praised the blog as ‘sending a powerful message’ and ‘bringing awareness to the importance of respect’. Those millions extended to the 12 featured selfie-takers, most of whom remorsefully apologized and deleted their selfies from their private social media accounts. The young man responsible for the ‘Jumping on Jews’ caption emailed Shapira,

The photo was meant for my friends as a joke. I am known to make out of line jokes, stupid jokes, sarcastic jokes. And they get it. If you knew me you would too. But when it gets shared, and comes to strangers who have no idea who I am, they just see someone disrespecting something important to someone else or them… (2017).

Douglas bestowed the title ‘future gatekeepers of history and memory’ upon youths, as is essential we preserve the memory of tragedies by altering their remembrance means to best suit those responsible for carrying them (p. 3). But we risk losing their original intended meaning in the process, especially when a tragedy’s horrific impact wanes with new generations. When asked why he created Yolocaust (Pineros, 2017), Shapira confessed,

I am worried that younger people fail to understand the importance of these memorials. They’re not there for me – for Jews – or for the victims, they are there for the people of today, for their moral compass.

References

Douglas, Kate. “Youth, trauma and memorialisation: The selfie as witnessing.” Journals, Sage Pub, 2017, journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1750698017714838. Accessed 21 Sept. 2017.

Gunter, Joel. “’Yolocaust’: How should you behave at a Holocaust memorial?” BBC News, BBC, 20 Jan. 2017, www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38675835. Accessed 21 Sept. 2017.

Pineros, Benjamin. “People mocking the Holocaust memorial get rightfully shamed with Photoshop (NSFW).” Lost at E Minor, 31 Jan. 2017, www.lostateminor.com/2017/01/31/people-mocking-holocaust-memorial-get-rightfully-shamed-photoshop-nsfw/. Accessed 22 Sept. 2017.

Shapira, Shahak. “Yolocaust.” Impressum, Jan. 2017, yolocaust.de/. Accessed 21 Sept. 2017.