World Wrestling Entertainment inexplicably used footage of infamous Nazi death camp Auschwitz in a recent promotion, prompting the grappling giant to apologize Friday for the offensive gaffe.
In a spot hyping the WWE’s recent WrestleMania and the on-screen rivalry between Dominik and Rey Mysterio, the former discusses his background as hardened criminal, saying “You think this is a game to me. I served hard time. And I survived” with footage of the concentration camp.
Officials with the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, a memorial to the 1.1 million people murdered by the Nazi in Oświęcim, Poland, decried the crass use of this solemn imagery.
“Exploiting the site that became a symbol of enormous human tragedy is shameless and insults the memory of all victims of Auschwitz,” the memorial and museum said in statement earlier this week.
A WWE spokesman said his company took immediate action once it was flagged.
“We had no knowledge of what was depicted,” the WWE said in statement to NBC News on Friday. “As soon as we learned, it was removed immediately. We apologize for this error.”
The Auschwitz footage is now absent from tape of WrestleMania Night 1 and has been replaced with generic images of a jail with barbed wire.
In this ongoing storyline, Dominik felt he was always in the shadow of his WWE Hall of Fame father Rey, leading the son to a dramatic heel turn.
Dominick eventually broke into his dad’s house, costing him a night in lockup — a brief stint that the un-self-aware son equated to hard time.
The son fought his father in this past weekend’s WrestleMania and was beaten soundly by the old man.
