Israeli Embassy, Jewish Rights Group Criticise ‘Bawaal’ Maker for Trivialising Holocaust
The Wire Staff
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New Delhi: The Israeli embassy on July 28, Friday issued a statement saying it is disturbed by the "trivialisation of the significance of the Holocaust in the movie Bawaal".
"There was a poor choice in the utilisation of some terminology in the movie, and though we assume no malice was intended, we urge everyone who may not be fully aware of the horrors of the Holocaust to educate themselves about it," it said in a tweet.
Separately, a prominent Jewish rights group has criticised Bollywood film, directed by Nitesh Tiwari, for using imagery and dialogues related to the Holocaust in bad taste.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center said the film trivialises the "suffering and systematic murder of millions", BBC reported.
In a statement, it said, "By having the protagonist in this movie declare that 'Every relationship goes through their Auschwitz', Nitesh Tiwari [the director], trivialises and demeans the memory of six million murdered Jews and millions of others who suffered at the hands of Hitler's genocidal regime."
"If the filmmaker's goal was to gain PR [publicity] for their movie by reportedly filming a fantasy sequence at the Nazi death camp, he has succeeded," it added.
The statement also asked Amazon Prime to remove the film from its platform, the report added.
However, the cast and director have called the criticism against the film unwarranted, the report said.
In the trailer, Jahnvi Kapoor’s character, Nisha, says to her husband Ajay, played by Varun Dhawan: “We’re all a little bit like Hitler, aren’t we?” “We’re not happy with what we have. And we want what others have.”
In another scene in the film, she says: “Every relationship goes through their Auschwitz.”
The Auschwitz concentration camp was one of many locations where Adolf Hilter’s Nazi regime brought Jews and others from all over Europe to be starved, humiliated, terrorised, and murdered in gas chambers.
These scenes are intended to draw a parallel between the protagonists' love story and the Holocaust.
The film also includes a fantasy scene inside a gas chamber and uses Hitler and the Auschwitz death camp as metaphors.
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