By Alexander Frederick
The recent Stranger Things finale brought Netflix servers down, tuning in more than ever as Eleven and company battled evil. An epic showdown. Cinema for the living room. Unfortunately, not everything seems to be perfect for the hit mystery series.
There are even serious accusations against “Stranger Things”. There is talk of trivialization and degradation.
Background is one of Jewish and Roma activists Change.org launched a petition demanding: “Hold Netflix and ‘Stranger Things’ to account!”
Because the new season, which is said to have consumed up to 30 million dollars in production per episode, was filmed in a former Nazi prison! And that’s exactly where a new tourist hotspot for all fans should be created.
Again and again in the eight episodes of the fourth season we find ourselves in a Russian gulag, where the popular character Jim Hopper (David Harbour) is imprisoned by the Soviets.
The Netflix scenes were filmed in Lukiškės prison, which is located in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. Operations have been idle there since 2019.
The great controversy: The same prison was once used by the Nazis as a torture prison for Jews, political prisoners and the Roma population.
From left: Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson, Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler and Sadie Sink as Max Mayfield in a scene from Stranger Things season four Photo: picture alliance/dpa/Courtesy Of Netflix
Lukiškės was notorious, considered the European Alcatraz. During the Nazi era, the fortress resembled a hell made of stone and steel. Thousands of mostly Jewish prisoners are said to have been tortured and shot here after the German occupation of Lithuania in the early 1940s.
Even after the war, the horror continued, the Soviet “liberators” used Lukiškės to imprison their enemies. The NKVD (Ministry of the Interior of the former USSR) brutally allowed Polish activists in particular to perish within the walls. The communists killed thousands of prisoners after the reconquest in 1944.
But the Nazis committed an even greater crime with the Ponary massacre: Hitler’s entourage murdered more than 100,000 Jews and Roma in the Baltic States in the early 1940s. Almost the entire Jewish population of Vilnius was wiped out with the help of the Lithuanian police.
So what screwed up “Stranger Things”?
The problem is the lack of classification of the terrible past of the location. Instead of serious processing, viewers expect pop culture fun and popcorn cinema in the series. That rakes in lots of money. More than 55,000 signatures on the petition testify to a “trivialization of the Holocaust”.
“The Holocaust is not for the entertainment industry to make profit and enjoy,” said the Jewish and Romance petition starters. “It is our genocide and for the Roma it is still ongoing.”
Maybe Netfix didn’t know the background of Lukiškės? Questionable. In any case, the city of Vilnius is unlikely to have forgotten it. However, they advertised the former Nazi prison as a tourist hostel!
Together with Airbnb, the cells were decorated with 80s furniture and merchandise from “Stranger Things”. Anyone who wanted could book a cozy room behind bars. For just under 100 euros a night!
Live like a Jewish prisoner under the Nazis? A bad taste…
The phenomenon is called dark tourism and is not an isolated case. Certain places with a bad past are increasingly being misused as tourist magnets or shared on Instagram in holiday selfies, Chernobyl being just one example.
A controversial topic, since historical places naturally have their right to exist and to be visited. However, if it is made for profit or hurts an ethnic group, it quickly becomes ugly.
The petition against Netflix therefore demands, among other things, the immediate end of the rental of Lukiškės.
Even if it looks like an advertising campaign for Netflix – the streaming company distances itself from the tasteless campaign. According to BILD information, the Airbnb campaign marketed with “Stranger Things” ran without Netflix’s knowledge.
In fact, the planned rental is said to have been canceled shortly before the release of Stranger Things season 4 after Netflix got involved. The listing is now offline on Airbnb.
Tasteless Holocaust tattoos in Stranger Things?
Still, that wasn’t it. The excitement continues: Who doesn’t know them – the numbered children in the “Stranger Things” series who were experimented with in the fictional small town of Hawkins in season one. In the new episodes we return in flashbacks to where Elf aka Eleven originated.
Like her, the gifted children wore numbers tattooed on their arms. Which many Stranger Things fans are now emulating in real life. Some of them are sharing their fresh number tattoos on Instagram and Twitter, and Netflix even shared the stories themselves.
Highly problematic, considering that Jewish concentration camp inmates had their prisoner numbers engraved on their arms in exactly the same way, which they still wear to this day. As an eternal painful reminder.
The petition against the series therefore states: “Not only does this mock the trauma shared by the Jewish and Romance communities, it also discredits the living memories of Holocaust survivors and their descendants.”
One of the supporters writes concerned: “As a Jewish person whose family perished in the Holocaust, this news leaves me angry, disappointed and just sad (…).”
Netflix is also being asked to donate the show’s earnings to the Jewish and Romance communities as “compensation” and a “public apology.”
Will the streaming giant comply? When asked by BILD, the company distanced itself from Airbnb and its hostel campaign, but Netflix did not want to comment on the other allegations.
One thing is certain: the celebrated “Stranger Things” now has a very, very bland aftertaste.