Hunters: Amazon show starring Al Pacino accused of ‘Jewsploitation’ and irresponsible Holocaust portrayal

Producer, whose grandmother was a Holocaust survivor, has defended the series

Amazon’s new series Hunters, starring Al Pacino, has been criticised by numerous Jewish groups for its portrayal of the Holocaust.

The show, which follows a team of Nazi hunters in 1970s America, has been accused of “Jewsploitation” for its fictitious depictions of atrocities during the Holocaust, in which an estimated six million Jews were killed.

In one scene, prisoners in an Auschwitz concentration camp are forced to kill each other while being used in a game of human chess.

The Auschwitz Memorial charity condemned this sequence, saying the programme makers invented “a fake game of human chess" in an act of "dangerous foolishness".

Chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, Karen Pollack, told the BBC such “flippant” portrayals risk contributing to Holocaust denial.

"We have a real responsibility to protect the truth of the Holocaust," she said, "particularly as we're moving away from living history, the survivors are few and frailer."

The producer of Hunters, David Weil, has defended the series, explaining the decision to fictionalise events.

"After all, it is true that Nazis perpetrated widespread and extreme acts of sadism and torture – and even incidents of cruel 'games' – against their victims,” said Weil, whose grandmother was a Holocaust survivor.

“I simply did not want to depict those specific, real acts of trauma. If the larger philosophical question is, ‘Can we ever tell stories about the Holocaust that are not documentary?’ I believe we can and should."

Hunters did not go down well with critics, either, who described it as “dangerously insensitive”, “awkward” and “odd”.