Gay men have been taking profile pictures at a Berlin Holocaust Memorial and posting them on Grindr, a sex hook-up application.
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The "Grindr Remembers" blog has compiled a gallery of questionable profile pictures taken at Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. They invariably depict men posing amid the 'field of stelae', a 19,000 square metre sculpture dedicated to the six million Jews who died at the hands of Nazi Germany.
Why this macabre setting would appeal as a Grindr background is unclear, though some have suggested the phallic nature of the sculptures might have something to do with it. The app allows men to connect with other men in close proximity for chats, pictures and meet-ups.
Some of the men in the photos are pouting, while others are smiling. Some posed with a friend, while others clambered atop the concrete slabs or jumped up in the air between them.
Joanne Cohen, president of Dayenu, Sydney's Jewish LGBTI group, said the phenomenon was disgraceful and insensitive.
"I can’t believe these people were present in this environment and they think it’s fun, it’s a laugh. It just really worries me," she said.
"Clearly they haven’t realised the power of the torture and trauma that went on there."
Ms Cohen, who has been to the Berlin memorial, described it as an eerie, scary and ghostly place that "smells of death".
"How somebody can’t grasp that, I don’t know," she said. She noted that homosexuals were also persecuted by the Nazis and the site contains a memorial to the thousands killed.
"It wasn’t just Jewish people that died. It was lots of different denominations, mostly gay men and women.”
Senthorun Raj, a researcher and writer on queer issues, said there were many examples of Grindr users misappropriating cultural objects such as Native American headdress, blackface and the Australian flag.
"Like with many other social platforms, the inability to appreciate the cultural histories of particular icons means they can be used in an insensitive way," he said.
While it is not clear that this constitutes a "trend", as other media have reported, a Grindr spokesperson last year told Salon.com: "What started as users expressing themselves on a topic not often discussed in social networking profiles, has now become disrespectful."
A little more than a week ago an Alabama teenager made world headlines after her smiling selfie at Auschwitz went viral.
