(JTA) — A German neo-Nazi gang reportedly created a version of the game Monopoly in which death camps were substituted for railroads.
The game, called Pogromly, also featured a swastika on the start square and offered players the chance to land on squares marked with the SS emblem. The board also included pictures of Hitler and sinister-looking Jews, The Telegraph reported.
The game was discovered in a garage used by the National Socialist Underground, which is accused in the ethnically motivated murder of 10 people. Bomb-making equipment and unused nail bombs also were found there.
From 2000 to 2011, the gang reportedly sold the game sets to raise revenue. The game is believed to be based on the events of Kristallnacht, the November 1938 Nazi pogrom against German Jews.
"Holocaust survivors recoiled with horror at the sight of the Monopoly-like board game replete with swastikas, ‘gasworks,’ concentration camps, burning Israeli flags, and grotesque caricatures of Jews,” Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, said in a statement.
”The game itself is merely a trivial footnote to the monstrous crimes these individuals are charged with, but the visual impact made by this twisted theme on such an innocently remembered childhood item serves to punctuate the all-consuming hatred that drove these people.”
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