Julius Ciss is the executive director of Jews for Judaism, Canada. When he posted the this picture of his daughter outside Auschwitz holding the Israeli flag in 2015, he was shocked to discover that Facebook considered it to be ‘insensitive’. What could be insensitive about such a picture?Ciss has given us permission to repost what he wrote on Facebook, presenting Facebook’s response to the picture:
Last week I posted the following regarding how Facebook had tagged the attached photo as “insensitive”:
“It seems that someone complained to Facebook about this previously posted photo of my daughter at Auschwitz Concentration Camp. When I posted it, I stated:
“My daughter, Miriam Ciss, was in Auschwitz Concentration Camp today. My mother Helena and Aunt Dolly survived Auschwitz Birkenau. This is just one of the amazing photos she took. Shabbat Shalom and Happy Passover.
“What I didn’t say was that aside from my parents and aunt, the Nazis murdered both my father’s and mother’s entire families.
“Well, today I received the following notice from Facebook: ‘Your photo wasn’t removed because it doesn’t violate our community standards, but it has been marked as insensitive because it could offend or upset people.’
“What do you think?”
This above posting went viral and in seven days, from April 9 – 15, 2015:
Reached 1,886,456 people,
Was Liked by 69,751 individuals,
Commented on 26,211 times,
Shared by 19,816 persons.
I guess enough friends complained because Facebook has now issued the following apology, just in time for Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Rememberance Day):
“It has come to our attention that a piece of your content was mistakenly flagged by one of our reps. This was a mistake and we’ve reversed the action taken. We apologize for our error.” – Eleanor, Community Operations, Facebook
I thank Facebook for acknowledging this mistake.
As I searched for an applicable quote to close off this posting in honour of Yom HaShoah, I realized that a very appropriate quote would be the following excerpt from my daughter Miriam’s diary of her recent trip to the death camps of Poland:
“Today was kind of a gap day… The fill in day… And yet, it was one of the saddest days of my trip to Poland…
“Today, we visited a mass grave. Yes, on this program, we’ve been to many and I never cried at any of them. Not as much as I cried here. You see, this mass grave is different… This mass grave holds 700 children. Yes, you heard me… Children.
“Alone, frightened and clinging to whatever family they had with them, if they even had any left to cling to… Nazis shot them… The children… And for what? Because they couldn’t produce… They were useless to the Reich and so, they were shot… Murdered…