WWE Apologizes For Using Auschwitz Footage During WrestleMania Video
An apology has been issued by WWE following a video package that featured Auschwitz Memorial Museum footage.
This is an update to a story we did last night. Going into the WrestleMania 39 match between Rey Mysterio and his son Dominik, there was a video that led to Dominik getting arrested. It led to Dominik doing promos about how tough he was because he survived prison even though he was only there for a few hours in the story. It added to Dominik’s character as “Prison Dom.”
During the WrestleMania Kickoff Show, there was a video package that aired showing an image of Dominik in a prison of some kind as guards took him out of there and put him in a car so that he can be driven to his match at WrestleMania. The idea was that he was free from prison so he could unleash on his father at WrestleMania.
However, the video featured an image of the Auschwitz concentration camp. The error was revealed by WWE fans on social media and the image was taken out of the video that aired during WrestleMania, but there were still a lot of people that saw it.
On Twitter, the Auschwitz Memorial Museum was very critical of WWE for using the image.
The fact that Auschwitz image was used to promote a WWE match is hard to call "an editing mistake". Exploiting the site that became a symbol of enormous human tragedy is shameless and insults the memory of all victims of Auschwitz.https://t.co/b4bbYgWPwjhttps://t.co/Xud4rbhEUSpic.twitter.com/tuJrzmK6mQ
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) April 5, 2023
On Friday morning, WWE issued this statement to the Washington Post.
“We had no knowledge of what was depicted. As soon as we learned, it was removed immediately.”
In case you don’t know about Auschwitz, a lot of people died there. As mentioned in the Washington Post article: “Germans built Auschwitz in occupied Poland in 1940, and it became one of the largest concentration camps during World War II. Around 1.1 million people — mostly Jews — died there as part of the Nazi’s extermination plans. About 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust.”
As it pertains to WWE, they clearly chose the wrong sort of imagery for this video package.