Varun Dhawan and Janhvi Kapoor’s Bawaal received criticism from some audience members for a scene that drew inspiration from the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz. Now, a Jewish organisation has written an open letter to Prime Video, urging them to take down the movie. The organisation, called the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), stated that Bawaal trivialises the ‘suffering and systematic murder of millions of victims of the Nazi Holocaust’.

Open letter to Prime Video

The SWC, a human rights NGO dedicated to the memory of the Nazi Holocaust victims, has called on Prime Video to remove the film Bawaal due to its abuse of the Nazi Holocaust as a plot device. The film, directed by Nitesh Tiwari, includes scenes where the protagonists enter a gas chamber in Auschwitz and are suffocated while wearing striped clothing. The main protagonist refers to Hitler as a metaphor for human greed, stating, ‘We’re all a little like Hitler, aren’t we?’

Film demeans memory of 6 million murdered Jews

Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the SWC criticizes the film and director Nitesh Tiwari in the open letter, stating that Auschwitz is not a metaphor and should not be trivialized. He believes that by using Auschwitz as a plot point, the film demeans the memory of 6 million murdered Jews and others who suffered under Hitler’s regime. Cooper urges Prime Video to stop monetizing Bawaal and remove it from the platform.

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Bawaal’s Auschwitz analogy

Following the film’s release, social media users criticized the far-fetched and insensitive parallel drawn between the lead pair’s romance and World War II. In Bawaal, Janhvi Kapoor and Varun Dhawan imagine themselves as people entering the gas chamber at a Nazi camp, wearing striped clothing. The film uses Hitler as a metaphor for human greed.

One of the characters in the film states that every human has a Hitler within due to their greed. Another controversial line refers to Auschwitz as an analogy for the struggles of relationships. These references to the Holocaust have sparked backlash and criticism.

Varun on Bawaal’s Auschwitz scene being slammed

In a recent interview with Pinkvilla, Varun addressed the criticism of the film’s Auschwitz scene. He questioned the inconsistency in people’s sensitivity towards such scenes in different films and suggested that critics should be more understanding and open-minded.