Bawaal trivialises the memory of six million murdered Jews: Jewish human rights body on the Varun Dhawan and Janhvi Kapoor starrer

Bawaal, starring Varun Dhawan and Janhvi Kapoor, and directed by Nitesh Tiwari, has landed in a controversy. The film has been called out by the Jewish human rights body Simon Wiesenthal Center for “demeaning the memory of 6 million murdered Jews.”

The film revolves around a couple played by Varun and Janhvi who go on a World War 2 trail to Europe. They visit notable WWII sites like Anne Frank’s House, Berlin and even go to Auschwitz which once housed the biggest concentration camp for Jews. The film shows the couple getting moved by the experience and resolving their own conflicts. In a dream sequence, we see Varun and Janhvi’s characters suffocating inside a gas chamber along with Jews. Another shows Janhvi’s character Nisha saying, “Every relationship goes through their Auschwitz” implying that every relationship has its struggles. Nisha even says, “We’re all a little like Hitler, aren’t we?” while talking about greediness in humans.

Simon Wiesenthal Center is a Jewish human rights organisation that defends the safety of Jews worldwide and calls out anti-Semitism and hate. SWC Associate Dean and Director of Global Social Action, Rabbi Abraham Cooper has asked Amazon to “stop monetising” Bawaal with immediate effect and called the film a “banal trivialisation of the suffering and systematic murder of millions of victims of the Nazi Holocaust.”

He said, “Auschwitz is not a metaphor. It is the quintessential example of man’s capacity for evil. By having the protagonist in this movie declare that ‘Every relationship goes through their Auschwitz,’ Nitesh Tiwari, trivializes and demeans the memory of 6 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 for their movie by reportedly filming a fantasy sequence at the Nazi death camp, he has succeeded. Amazon Prime should stop monetizing Bawaal by immediately removing this banal trivialization of the suffering and systematic murder of millions of victims of the Nazi Holocaust,” the statement concluded.

In a recent interview with Pinkvilla, Nitesh Tiwari defended his film and said that he was “disappointed with the way some people” had interpreted the Auschwitz sequences in the film. “I am a bit disappointed with the way some people have comprehended it. That was never the intention. It would never be my intention to be insensitive in any which way… Don’t we see Ajju and Nisha getting completely troubled and moved by what they see in Auschwitz? They do. They see the prisoners, they see how they were stacked, they see how they were exterminated. Are they being insensitive about it? No. They are moved to tears,” he said.