A Feb. 24 carnival in Spain featured people dressed as Nazi concentration camp guards and Jewish camp prisoners in a parade.
Pictures from the carnival showed women dressed as Jewish concentration camp prisoners while holding Israeli flags, as well as a float featuring a menorah in between two gas chamber chimneys.
In Campo de Criptana, Spain, a cheerful Carnival rally about the Holocaust: a camp guard girl with Dobermans, girls dressed as Jewish victims of extermination camps, and with a trace of a shot in the ribs, boys with fake weapons dressed up as Nazi officershttps://t.co/NCLPPjAJv6 pic.twitter.com/13a4ij9xAS
— Alfons López Tena 🦇 (@alfonslopeztena) February 25, 2020
According to the UK Guardian, the parade was part of an annual carnival in the Spanish city of Campo de Criptana and was intended to commemorate those who lost their lives in the Holocaust.
The Auschwitz Museum condemned the parade in a tweet.
“Hard to describe: memory upside-down, far beyond vulgar kitsch, without any relevance, without reflection & respect,” the museum wrote.
Hard to describe: memory upside-down, far beyond vulgar kitsch, without any relevance, without reflection & respect.
Difícil de describir: desmemoria traspasando la frontera de la vulgaridad y lo kitsch. Sin ningún tipo de relevancia, reflexión ni respeto. https://t.co/Zfy8z0eH1B
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) February 25, 2020
Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt similarly tweeted, “The participants’ purported good intentions are completely lost with this wildly inappropriate display. Evoking Holocaust imagery like this is disrespectful at best and dehumanizing at worst to the victims of the Shoah. An apology should be forthcoming.”
The participants’ purported good intentions are completely lost with this wildly inappropriate display. Evoking Holocaust imagery like this is disrespectful at best and dehumanizing at worst to the victims of the Shoah. An apology should be forthcoming.https://t.co/UWnhBET4IJ
— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) February 25, 2020
StandWithUs Israel Executive Director Michael Dickson also tweeted that the parade was “a disgusting display regaling in anti-Semitism with the intent to cause maximum hurt.”
https://twitter.com/michaeldickson/status/1232374137169022989
New York Times opinion editor and columnist Bari Weiss tweeted, “Totally normal event underway in Spain.”
Totally normal event underway in Spain. https://t.co/DYSekdu0Fk
— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) February 25, 2020
The Spain carnival display comes on the heels of a Feb. 23 carnival in Aalst, Belgium, that featured people depicting Jews as insects and people dressed in Nazi uniforms. The Jerusalem Post wrote in a Feb. 24 editorial that the Aalst carnival was “an absolutely deliberate anti-Semitic assault,” later adding: “Welcome to Europe 2020.”
