Jewish Choreographer Blasts ‘Crazy’ Criticism of Holocaust-Themed Ice Dancing Routine
It turns out the creator of a Holocaust-themed Russian TV ice skating routine is Jewish — and he’s defending the stunningly tasteless show against criticism he calls “craziness”
Ilya Averbukh on Monday told the Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid that he came up with the concept for the routine, in which the skaters wore striped concentration camp uniforms along with yellow stars of David.
“I would call all this reaction a sign of the craziness of today,” he told the paper, according to the Times of Israel.
The show was performed by Tatiana Navka, the wife of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, on an episode of the Russian celebrity skating show “Ice Age.”
It drew a wave of condemnation in Russia, Israel and in international media.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO