Yolocaust: Should tourists take selfies at the Holocaust memorial?

It is rare these days to visit a site which is not packed with tourists taking selfies. From Paris to Tokyo, the selfie obsession shows no sign of abating.

But sometimes it is inappropriate for historical sites to provide the backdrop for grinning and leaping tourists. Memorials are not the right spots for a funny photo shoot with friends.

This is the message Israeli-German writer Shahak Shapira hopes to highlight with his new photo project Yolocaust. His online collection exposes the disrespectful behaviour of many tourists while visiting the Berlin Holocaust memorial.

On his website he has displayed social media photos which depict tourists jumping, climbing and doing yoga poses on the memorial. He has superimposed the smiling figures onto old photographs taken at concentration camps.

On his website he has displayed social media photos which depict tourists jumping, posing and climbing on the memorial. He has superimposed the smiling figures onto old photographs taken at concentration camps.

The harrowing images show a tourist jumping over a pile of corpses and a couple taking a selfie in front of two starving young men.

On the Yolocaust website Shapira writes: "About 10,000 people visit the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe every day. Many of them take goofy pictures, jump, skate or bike on the 2,711 concrete slabs. To many, the grey stelae symbolize gravestones for the 6 Million Jews that were murdered and buried in mass graves, or the grey ash to which they were burned to in the death camps."

The project has been praised on social media with users thanking Shapira for drawing attention to the "stupid", "foolish" behaviour of many tourists.

If the people featured in the project would like the pictures to be taken down, Shapira said that they should send an email to undouche.me@yolocaust.de.