As was pointed out in our review of Amazon’s new series, “Hunters,” the series isn’t going to be the best education for those folks hoping to learn more about what happened to Jewish folks during the Holocaust. The series is very much a stylized, action-first look at the fallout of the Holocaust and the people in 1970s New York City that go on a mission to eradicate the Nazis that still are alive.
But according to social media posts from the Auschwitz Memorial, fictionalizing events of World War II and the Holocaust, as seen in “Hunters,” is a bridge too far. The official Twitter account of the Auschwitz Memorial tweeted, “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.”
In a reply from a Twitter user that said it’s okay for a film or TV show to fictionalize parts of a real-life event, Auschwitz Memorial replied, “Here we absolutely disagree. This is disrespectful and dangerous.”
In a later tweet, the Memorial added, “We prefer a true story that will lead to a million truths. One should not create fake reality if the details about this reality are so well documented.”
As you might expect, when a series such as “Hunters” gets called out in such a public way, the creator might want to reply. And David Weil did (via THR). In a statement, he discussed how his grandmother was actually held at Auschwitz and when he visited the location decades later, he was taken aback by the “vestiges of the nightmarish world she had survived.”
He added, “It was the moment consecrated in time and memory that I sought to make good on doing my part — however big or however small — to ensure the promise of ‘Never Again.’ I believed then — as I do now — that I had a responsibility as the grandson of Holocaust survivors to keep their stories alive.”
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Weil admits that his series is “inspired by true events,” but wants everyone to know that the series “is not documentary. And it was never purported to be. In creating this series it was most important for me to consider what I believe to be the ultimate question and challenge of telling a story about the Holocaust: how do I do so without borrowing from a real person’s specific life or experience?”
To further exemplify the fact that the characters in the series aren’t supposed to be real Holocaust survivors, he made sure that they all had tattoos that were above the highest-recorded number—202,499.
And as for the scene that is referenced by the Memorial, he said, “[T]his is a fictionalized event. Why did I feel this scene was important to script and place in series? To most powerfully counteract the revisionist narrative that whitewashes Nazi perpetration, by showcasing the most extreme — and representationally truthful — sadism and violence that the Nazis perpetrated against the Jews and other victims. And why did I feel the need to create a fictional event when there were so many real horrors that existed? After all, it is true that Nazis perpetrated widespread and extreme acts of sadism and torture — and even incidents of cruel ‘games’ — against their victims. I simply did not want to depict those specific, real acts of trauma.”
“Hunters” is now available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.