‘Yolocaust’ tourists are shamed online over selfies at Berlin’s Holocaust memorial

Built as a solemn place of reflection, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is an undulating sea of stone blocks lined up like so many coffins on a sprawling patch of central Berlin. But in the look-at-me-age of Instagram and Facebook, it has also become something else.

The perfect backdrop for a selfie.

At a place honouring the memory of the Nazis’ victims, young laughing visitors hop from block to block, searching for the best angles. Some pose sensually atop the slabs for eye-candy shots on dating websites. One man had his picture taken between the stones while juggling.

Then someone said “Stop!”

That someone was best-selling author Shahak Shapira - a 28-year-old Israeli transplant to Berlin who launched a project that became an instant example of the power of the Internet to generate shame. He launched a website called “Yolocaust”, and used it to publish images of some of the worst offenders and then blended them into horrific backdrops of the Holocaust. The name of the site is a play on the slang “yolo”, an internet acronym for “you only live once”.

The effort went viral across Europe and beyond, becoming a stinging example of how record numbers of global tourists - particularly the young - have stripped revered sites of their gravitas.