One version of WrestleMania 39’s video package for the Rey vs. Dominik Mysterio program was called out for using an image of Poland’s Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. The museum is part of a memorial to the million-plus people, the vast majority of whom were Jews, killed at concentration & extermination camps operated there during the Nazi occupation of the country during World War II.
Someone in the WWE tried to find prison footage for Dominik Mysterio's "hard time" video and ended up using footage of what I'm pretty sure is the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. It ran during the WrestleMania kickoff. pic.twitter.com/0J6lqnqWVe
— Aaron Wrotkowski (@AaronWrotkowski) April 2, 2023
That was after the video aired on the Kickoff show. WWE either saw tweets like that, or noticed on their own that what they’d used wasn’t generic prison footage to be used along with Dom’s humorous delusions he’d done “hard time” as part of his feud with his father. The shots were not present when the package aired before the Mysterios match on Sat., April 1’s main WrestleMania stream.
But coverage of the earlier version came to the Auschwitz Memorial’s attention, prompting this tweet earlier today (April 6):
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/b4bbYgWPwj https://t.co/Xud4rbhEUS pic.twitter.com/tuJrzmK6mQ
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) April 5, 2023
WWE has not commented.
The situation marks the company’s second Nazi-related public relations gaffe of the past couple years, after they briefly changed current Intercontinental champion Gunther’s name from WALTER to Gunther Stark, a name shared by a German military commander from WWII.
You can learn more about the Holocaust and its legacy here.
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