The Holocaust is undeniably one of the saddest and most awful events that has ever happened in human history. Given this status then, you might think that it’s odd that tourists want to take pictures of themselves at landmarks designed to memorialise it.

Images VIA

Despite the disrespectful connotations of doing so, many people continue to take selfies at this monument. One Israeli author and satirist Shahak Shapira just isn’t happy about it at all and has chosen to highlight what she sees as the inappropriate behaviour of young people at the Berlin holocaust monument in a new photo series entitled ‘YOLOCAUST’. In it, Shapria takes real life photographs of people posing at the monument from Facebook without their permission and superimposes the image onto an archived photograph from a Nazi extermination camp.

The results are extremely powerful and you can see a bunch of them around this page. Here’s what Shapira herself had to say about the project:

No historical event compares to the Holocaust. It’s up to you how to behave at a memorial site that marks the death of 6 million people.

Yes, some people’s behaviour at the memorial site is indeed disrespectful. But the victims are dead, so they’re probably busy doing dead people’s stuff rather than caring about that.

If people suddenly regret having uploaded their images to the internet then I will remove them when requested.

Wow, she doesn’t sound too bitter and edgy does she? I suppose it comes with the territory of being an Israeli satirist though. However, she does raise a good point with this series so I hope next time you visit a memorial such as this you do your best to act respectfully.

Nobody has ever acted as disrespectfully as this woman at a memorial though. Unbelievable behaviour.