Well, again, I agree that it is not appropriate. And again, they're still children with 14 or 15 years old. Let them make their own mistakes.
And these idiots are one day going to run the country!
You have one stupid selfie and assume a) that those teenagers are idiots who have no sense for morality and b) that they will never change etc. How can you (or anybody else in that matter, don't mean you personally) know that? Maybe one of them will have a good role in life later?
I've been to Bergen-Belsen and Sachsenhausen, each time for the whole day. Their visit will take around 8 hours too. Taking one photo is 2 minutes. It's very superficial to assume that those 2 minutes represent the whole personality of a human.
There are a lot of possible questions which of course you don't ask if you simply declare them stupid and narcisstic:
Maybe they had a kind of personal serious meeting with the place a little later?
Maybe the kids use the nonsense as a vehicle to keep the the historical horror away from them? Would not be the first time and very understandable.
Maybe it's even an attempt of necessary liberation from an overwhelming history? It might not be that easy to cope with the jewish history and acutal Israeli political situation.
And maybe it is even a celebration of survival and final victory? If Hitler would have won the war they would not be there any more. Not a reason to be glad?
There is a site "selfies on bad places" (or something like that), where somebody - obviously in defense of humanity or something, collects the pictures, including those before the coffin of their grandparents. Of course he doesn't bother to make the faces unrecognizable. I think that is dangerous. The real danger here are not misbehaving teens or children, it is the never forgetting internet. It's possible that in 20 years or so someone finds this picture and they don't get a job etc pp because of the snap at granny's coffin 25 years ago.
A year ago a friend of mine died. She was 40 and had a little daughter of 14 and she didn't realise anything. And that daughter probably might have said or done something stupid. That would have been her right and everybody would have understood.
It was around 200 years ago that Rousseau and Kant have invented childhood. This includes the right for errors. And it is necessary, esp. for young people. They have a right to make mistakes without being presented by google like the bad and stupid in the middle-ages at the pillory (Schandpranger). Children are
not little grown-ups but the internet steals the "right of the moment", the chance to misbehave without having the voyeristic google-facebook users leering, condem them quickly (and probably harm them by doing that) and then move to the next event of the net.
That's why I have a problem with moralists like the Prof of the article you linked. He writes: "
If the story about young Israelis mocking and making fun of death camps as a means of getting "hits" and online attention is correct, then perhaps the Afrotopian black respectability idealization of "the Jews" needs to be reconsidered."
These teenagers are obviously so bad that he has to correct his "idealization" of "the Jews"?
Wow, he waited a long time. I may be wrong (which I'm not
) but Israel supported South-Afrika, when almost every other country had embargos running. If you look at it historically it's understandable out of the situation of the time but Israel supported the Apartheit for a very long time. Those kiddies are obviously far worse than that.
In Germany we have a proverb. Let keep the church in the village - which means that one should keep calm and not overreact.
