TikTok Holocaust trend 'hurtful and offensive'
- Published
The Auschwitz Museum says people should not be shamed for taking part in the trend
A TikTok trend where people pretend to be Holocaust victims is "hurtful and offensive", the Auschwitz Museum says.
Users have shared clips of themselves with fake bruises, wearing clothes that Jews were ordered to wear by the Nazis.
The museum - at the site of the former Nazi concentration camp - said some of the videos on the app were "beyond the border of trivialization of history".
But it warned against "vilifying, shaming and attacking" those who have taken part.
The trend has been heavily criticised on social media as "disrespectful" and "disturbing".
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In a statement, the museum says: "Stories of people who were imprisoned and murdered in Auschwitz are incredibly tragic, painful and emotional."
It adds that some of the videos "were not created to commemorate anyone but to become part of an online trend".
"This is very painful," the museum says in the statement posted on Twitter.
However, it adds that the "motivation of some people" posting the videos came "from the need to find some way of expressing personal memory.
"They use the symbolic language familiar to them."
Rather than shaming those who participate, it should be used as an "educational challenge", the museum says.
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The Holocaust saw the genocide of six million European Jews, with more than a million people killed at Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945.
A TikTok spokesperson has told Newsbeat the platform's "top priority" is keeping their community safe.
"We preemptively blocked users' ability to search for #holocaustchallenge earlier this week and we are also redirecting any searches for this hashtag to our Community Guidelines to further educate users."
They added guidelines show TikTok does "not tolerate hate speech content that targets any individual or group on the basis of protected attributes".
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