The Jordan Peele-curated Amazon Prime series, Hunters, is catching some heat from the Auschwitz Memorial for a historically inaccurate depiction of an event that never actually occurred during the Holocaust, according to Variety. The show’s opening credits feature several frames from the premiere episode where Nazi soldiers played a game of chess using Jewish prisoners as chess pieces. As each chess piece is eliminated, the Jewish captives are executed on the spot.
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The show about a team of American Nazi hunters originally debuted this past Friday (Feb. 21) and was almost instantaneously met with harsh criticism from the Auschwitz Memorial who took to their Twitter account to voice their displeasure with the scene, Tweeting:
“Auschwitz was full of horrible pain & suffering documented in the accounts of survivors. Inventing a fake game of human chess for @huntersonprime is not only dangerous foolishness & caricature. It also welcomes future deniers. We honor the victims by preserving factual accuracy.”
David Weil, the series’ showrunner and creator released a statement of his own this past Sunday (Feb. 24) saying, “symbolic representations provide individuals access to an emotional and symbolic reality that allows us to better understand the experiences of the Shoah.”
Weil also stated that the show “is not a documentary” and “was never purported to be.” He told Business Insider that Hunters was based on an 80-page “bible,” he created five years ago which details each characters’ backstory. Weil’s grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, was his inspiration for the show’s existence.
Hunters is currently available to watch on the Amazon Prime streaming service. Check out the trailer to the series in the video provided below.
