The hit Netflix show “Stranger Things” shot part of its fourth season inside a Lithuanian prison infamous for its connection to murders of prisoners by Nazis and the Soviet Secret police as well as the imprisonment of Menachem Begin, later the prime minister of Israel.
Stranger Things filmed their latest season at Lukiškės Prison — a literal Nazi concentration camp — where around 100,000 Jews were tortured and then sent to be murdered.
This in such bad taste. I’m shocked by the inhumanity. pic.twitter.com/Lzcq9kPlAV
— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) June 7, 2022
Prisoners at Lukiškės Prison in Vilnius, hundreds of them Jews in World War II, were taken from the prison and murdered.
In September 1940, the Soviet secret police arrested Begin; he was imprisoned in Lukiškės Prison for eight months.
In June 1941, the NKVD shot prisoners at Lukiškės Prison. Later, once they occupied Vilnius, the Nazis started persecuting Jews; in July 1941, German officials took 60 Jews from the prison and murdered them on Titnago Street near the Ponary forest.
“In 1941, the first people to be murdered in the Ponary massacre were 348 Jews and others who had been imprisoned at Lukiškės,” The Times of Israel noted. “Nearly 100,000 people, mostly Jewish, would be murdered at the Ponary site near Vilnius, formerly known as Vilna, in the subsequent months.”
“The Lukiškės prison only ceased to operate as a correctional facility in 2019,” Best of Netflix reported. “The visitors that the building receives now are not the loved ones of inmates but holidaymakers with a penchant for Nazi history or indeed, Stranger Things. The prison has now been redecorated for the Stranger Things set and also transformed into an Airbnb for dark tourism. The remnant atmosphere of human torture and suffering has been glazed over with 1980s-style decor to bring the Stranger Things aesthetic.”
“If you’re worried that the Airbnb is as austere as the prison the Lukiškės represents in Stranger Things, fear not,” Timeout gushed. “The cell you’ll be staying in is kitted out with lots of home comforts – including plenty of ST-themed décor like 1980s-style furniture and the first season’s famed coloured fairy lights. Considering it is, y’know, a prison cell, the place is pretty damn swanky.”
“It’s been six months since the Battle of Starcourt, which brought terror and destruction to Hawkins,” a synopsis of Stranger Things’ fourth season stated. “Struggling with the aftermath, our group of friends are separated for the first time – and navigating the complexities of high school hasn’t made things any easier. In this most vulnerable time, a new and horrifying supernatural threat surfaces, presenting a gruesome mystery that, if solved, might finally put an end to the horrors of the Upside Down.”
Source: Dailywire
