Stranger Things season 4 scandal! Netflix is accused of having filmed in a former Lithuanian prison where massacres were perpetrated by the Nazis. And make it a tourist excursion…
Netflix is under fire for filming part of Stranger Things season 4 in Lukiškės prison in Vilnius, Lithuania, where the Nazis imprisoned Jews and Roma, many of whom were executed in the massacre of Ponar. The news broke when a petition was posted on the site Change.org. These are the scenes with Jim Hopper (David Harbour), a prisoner in Russia.
With over 15,000 signatures at the time of this writing, the petition aims to “hold Stranger Things and Netflix accountable for their Holocaust erasure“. The petitioners call on the platform to donate the profits of the season to Jewish and Roma communities in Lithuania under “repairs“.
The petition also denounces Airbnb’s efforts to convert prison cells into hotel rooms. They are transformed to look like sets from the series, like Joyce Byers’ apartment, for example. The authors of the petition demand “the immediate closure of Airbnb“, which began welcoming visitors on June 4. Note that any reservation is now impossible.
Bad taste all the way
Additionally, the petition denounces the fact that fans of the series are now getting numbers tattooed on their wrists and posting them on Instagram, with the Stranger Things Instagram account reposting some of these photos.
“Not only is it to mock the trauma of the Jewish and Roma community, but it is to further desecrate the memory of Holocaust survivors (a significant portion are still alive today) and their descendants“, says the petition.
Below is a thread that denounces this practice:
In addition to the reparations sought with Season 4 proceeds, the petitioners request “public apologies from Airbnb, Netflix and Stranger Things“; they should be published immediately with the “full understanding of how this adds up to the erasure of Holocaust victims and the continued persecution of Roma communities.“
A notorious prison
Lukiškės Prison was built at the beginning of the XXth century and housed both criminals and political prisoners. During the Nazi occupation of Lithuania during the Second World War, the prison became in 1941 a place of detention for Jews and Roma. That year, 348 Jews and others who had been imprisoned in Lukiškės were murdered in the Ponary massacre.
This unspeakable massacre is 100,000 people, mainly Jews, Poles and Russians, executed between July 1941 and August 1944 near the station of Ponary, a suburb of Vilnius, in Lithuania.
After its closure in 2019, the prison was transformed into an artistic and cultural place which now hosts concerts and filming. Asked by us, Netflix did not respond to a request for comment.