‘Cruelty and butchery’: Netflix slammed for Stranger Things filming locations

Netflix has come under fire for using a Nazi-era prison to film Stranger Things – but fans have dismissed the complaint as “cancel culture”.

Netflix has come under fire for filming Stranger Things at a location linked to the Holocaust.

Jewish advocates have slammed the streaming giant for seeking inspiration and filming on sets associated with the dark period in history for the fourth season of the hit series.

The season was shot at a number of locations, two of which were more controversial than others due to their sinister past.

The show’s fictional mental hospital, Pennhurst, was inspired by a notorious US asylum which shared a similar name.

Meanwhile, Russian prison scenes were filmed on location in a former Lithuanian prison, known as Lukiškės, which was used by Nazis in 1941.

A number of Jewish people died at the infamous prison, while 350 more were imprisoned before they were later killed in the Ponary massacre.

Peter Werthweim from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry has called on Netflix to apologise and to “take accountability” for the way it have resurfaced grim memories for suffering Jewish and Roma people.

“Whether they are conscious of it or not, their work has trivialised the enormity of the Holocaust, desensitised the public to the horror of genocide, and thereby helped lay a foundation for future acts of cruelty and butchery,” Mr Werthweim told ABC News.

But fans of the fictional drama series have since hit back online, defending the producers’ choice of location and labelling the sets as “educational” and “giving the show some realness”.

“They used the site in Lithuania for [filming] certain scenes but also built the prison interior themselves. They do not promote the site as a Holocaust setting in the show – it’s purely used as a building set piece, pretending to be a Russian prison,” one fan of the show wrote on Facebook.

“In my house the show has been educational … [Netflix] has reflected on the dark side of humanity which promotes conversation and self reflection,” said another viewer.

Fans of the hit series defended Netflix’s decision.

Meanwhile, other supporters of the supernatural drama series hit out at “cancel culture”.

“Time to cancel Stranger Things! Or maybe stop trying to find a problem with everything and everyone in life and look at the reason behind the action,” one Facebook user wrote.

“Absurd. Following this logic, nobody should visit old battlegrounds or any place where tragedies played out … which would include London, Paris, New York as much as Auschwitz, Normandy beaches of Gallipoli,” said another.

Lukiškės prison was open for a century until it was closed in 2019. Netflix had plans to turn the venue into a Stranger Things-themed tourist attraction in partnership with Go Vilnius tourism, with cells to be rented out on Airbnb.

However those plans were shut down after a petition against the project obtained more than 53,000 signatures, ABC News reported.

The move to reject the idea was one some fans did agree with, however others argued that the situation was no different to museums and memorial sites dedicated to educating visitors about the past.

“Filming in places and taking inspo from those places is not horrible. No one freaks out when a war movie does it … But [turning it into] an Airbnb and making it look like a prison cell is too far and creepy,” one fan wrote.

“I guess if you are going to question Netflix’s series you also have to question the tourism associated with such places,” said another.

While season four of the hit show has wrapped up there’s still more to come, after creators, the Duffer Brothers, announced a fifth season which is expected to bring the series to a close.