Concentration camp themed escape room a bad idea

[jlw]

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/01/27/concentration-camp-themed-esca.html

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[SpunkyTWS]

What does it say that I assumed this was here in the U.S.? It’s shocking and inappropriate anywhere obviously but I’ve been to Holocaust museums in the Czech Republic. Decades after I visited I still have vivid memories of a Jewish cemetery in Prague.

I can’t imagine someone there thinking this was a good idea.

[Franko]

i immediately assumed it was here in the U.S., too, so whatever it says, it says it about us both. what a horrifically bad idea no matter where it is.

[Skeptic]

I think maybe the problem starts at “Escape Room”.

First time even I heard of them was when I saw a sign on a street in Amsterdam. Sounded like a scam where people tie you to a chair and then run off with your wallet. I was sort of stunned to later find out that escape rooms were a thing, and a thing all over the place.

[d_r]

The Argons always have had a regrettable sense of humour.

[nimelennar]

They started out as an online thing (one of the first really popular ones was Crimson Room).

After a few thousand of those showed up online, I guess they figured that someone should try it in real life.

[MaiqTheLiar]

That is quite a cemetery.

[caitifty1]

I guess that means escape rooms have officially jumped the shark.

[SpunkyTWS]

I’ve done a few. They’re fun if you’re into puzzle-solving and working with others. And that’s been the emphasis with themes like “find the hidden recording contract” or “find the stolen painting”.

If the place offered “concentration camp escape” as one of the options though I wouldn’t give them any business.

[anon26304152]

[Skeptic]

Robert Clary played Corporal Louis LeBeau on Hogan’s Heroes (seen wearing the red beret in the picture you posted). He’s a French Jew who was imprisoned in Buchenwald and was saved when it was liberated by the Allies in 1945.

Asked about parallels between LeBeau’s incarceration and his own, Clary said, “Stalag 13 is not a concentration camp. It’s a POW camp, and that’s a world of difference. You never heard of a prisoner of war being gassed or hanged. When the show went on the air, people asked me if I had any qualms about doing a comedy series dealing with Nazis and concentration camps. I had to explain that it was about prisoners of war in a stalag, not a concentration camp, and although I did not want to diminish what soldiers went through during their internments, it was like night and day from what people endured in concentration camps.”

Robert Clary

[Boundegar]

There’s always that one guy who says, in retrospect, it was a bad idea. Why doesn’t anybody ask if it’s a bad idea, yknow, beforehand?

[sosumi]

Ah, Amsterdam, where the tourist bureau across the street from the train station has warnings about people hanging about offering inexpensive places to stay. I got offered a whole apartment for the weekend just around the corner from the Anne Frank house.

[SteampunkBanana]

Werner Klemperer, who played Colonel Klink was a German Jew. He agreed to do the show on one condition: The Germans would never, ever be shown as anything more than incompetent fools unable to win.

[Skeptic]

@sosumi

Ah, Amsterdam, where the tourist bureau across the street from the train station has warnings about people hanging about offering inexpensive places to stay. I got offered a whole apartment for the weekend just around the corner from the Anne Frank house.

And with so many convenient, deep canals with no guard rails, or ladders to help you climb out if you should “accidentally” fall in and drown after you are mugged.

[Skeptic]

@SteampunkBanana

Werner Klemperer, who played Colonel Klink was a German Jew. He agreed to do the show on one condition: The Germans would never, ever be shown as anything more than incompetent fools unable to win.

I didn’t know that Sgt. Shultz (John Banner) was an Austrian Jew, as was General Burkhalter (Leon Askin).

[sosumi]

Could be, but at that time they were preying on backpackers by taking them to squats and robbing them of what they could while the victims were asleep.

[Skeptic]

@sosumi

Could be, but at that time they were preying on backpackers by taking them to squats and robbing what they could while the victims were asleep.

Ah…Hard to keep track of all bad things to be warry of…

[waetherman]

I admit I do have some understanding for where the creators of this “escape room” might have been coming from. One of the most influential classes in my high school experience was a class about WWII in which the teacher essentially ran a “simulation” of nazi Germany as part of the class; from the outset of the semester we ere divided in to Jews, Germans, and neutrals. During simulation, Germans could basically do what they wanted to Jews and neutrals had to stand by and watch or risk invoking the wrath of the Germans. Nothing serious happened, there was no physical punishment, but there were consequences for following the rules or being executed (which the Germans could do at a whim). Jews could be given a worse grade for “dying” or failing to participate (or at least that’s what we were told) or could get extra credit for “escaping.”

It was nothing like a concentration camp, but at the same time it gave a much more tangible experience to the history than just watching horrific films. It was controversial, and probably couldn’t be done in today’s classroom, but I laud the teacher of that class for making a truly unique and memorable learning experience.

[sosumi]

They used to prey on kids who didn’t know any better.