‘Banal trivialisation’: Jewish group demands removal of ‘Bawaal’ from Prime Video

Janhvi Kapoor, Varun Dhawan in a still from ‘Bawaal’

Jewish organisations have taken offence at the ‘banal trivialisation’ of The Holocaust in Nitesh Tiwari’s Bawaal, streaming on Amazon Prime Video from July 21.

The film, starring Varun Dhawan and Janhvi Kapoor, frames incidents from World War II and the genocide of Jews in Nazi death camps as a metaphor for a faltering relationship. It also makes several references to Adolf Hitler and has fantasy sequences set inside the Auschwitz concentration camps.

Simon Wiesenthal Centre, an NGO dedicated to victims and survivors of The Holocaust, has written an open letter to Prime Video asking to take down Bawaal from the platform.

The organisation has accused the film — co-written by Tiwari, Piyush Gupta, Nikhil Mehrotra and Shreyas Jain from a story by Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari — of ‘misappropriating’ the Nazi Holocaust and Auschwitz.

“Auschwitz is not a metaphor. It is the quintessential example of Man’s capacity for Evil,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, SWC Associate Dean and Director of Global Social Action, was quoted as saying on the NGO’s website. “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.”

The Rabbi censured Tiwari for shooting a fantasy sequence at the site of the Auschwitz concentration camps.

“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,” Rabbi Cooper said

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In an earlier interview with an online portal, Tiwari defended his film and said that he finds it hurtful that people are questioning his intent. Lead actor Varun Dhawan also stood by the film, asking where does people’s sensitivity go when watching an English movie.