Hunters: the controversial Amazon Prime series

Last week "Hunters" the new Amazon Prime series was released. Created by David Weil and starring Al Pacino, it is about a group of Nazi hunters and has caused opposite reactions and has even attracted the attention of the Auschwitz Memory Center. Here is everything you need to know about the series before watching it.

What is Hunters about?

Jonah Heidelbaum, played by Logan Lerman, is a young man who mourns the murder of his grandmother. He is contacted by Jonah Heidelbaum, a friend of his grandmother, played by Al Pacino, to investigate the murder, which seemed personal in nature, and avenge her death. Pacino introduces him to a group of Nazi hunters that he founded with Jonah's grandmother.

The series, then, follows this eclectic group of Nazi hunters who are convinced that there are still Nazis in the New York of 1977 planning a fourth Reich in the United States. Bloody and tragicomic, Hunters poses a different vision of justice and revenge. In addition to Logan Lerman and Al Pacino, Lena Olin, Jerrika Hinton, Saul Rubinek, Carol Kane, Josh Radnor, Greg Austin, Tiffany Boone, Louis Ozawa, Kate Mulvany, and Dylan Baker are also in the cast of the series.

Also read: High Fidelity: the new series from Hulu

The controversial reception

Although Hunters seems to fit perfectly into a recent trend of comedies about the Holocaust, World War II or Nazism in general, strong criticism to it was swift. Until now it seemed that within this trend historical lightness and light content had been forgiven by the audience and critics ( see the nomination that Jojo Rabbit received from the Academy at the Oscar Awards).

However, Hunters has grabbed the attention of the Auschwitz Memory Center, who made statements in Twitter in which the Amazon Prime series was harshly criticized for its low historical rigor and its irresponsible representation of what happened in the Nazi concentration camps. 

The Auschwitz Memory Center's Twitter account calls a "caricature" a fictional torture scene in the series that takes place in a concentration camp consisting of a human chess in which the pieces are the prisoners ,  and they must die every time one of the players captures a piece. The museum also demands historical rigor for the respect of the victims.

Given this, the creator of the series, David Weil, published a statement in which he clarified that the series has no documentary purpose and that the historical liberties it takes are made with a dramatic purpose that, according to him, contribute to symbolic representations that the series will achieve. Only the reader can tell whether this purpose was achieved or not.