A memorial to one of the most infamous Nazi death camps slammed an Amazon TV series this week for depicting a made-up “human chess” game during the Holocaust.

The Auschwitz Memorial said the sadistic scene in the Al Pacino-led Amazon Prime drama “Hunters” belies the real horrors of the massacre of 6 million Jews during World War II.

“Inventing a fake game of human chess for @huntersonprime is not only dangerous foolishness & caricature. It also welcomes future deniers,” the memorial said on Twitter Sunday. “We honor the victims by preserving factual accuracy.”

Set in New York in 1977, “Hunters” follows a band of vigilante Nazi hunters who discover that hundreds of Nazi officials are living in the US and plotting to establish a “Fourth Reich.” The show has raised eyebrows over its fictional depiction of concentration camps such as Auschwitz, where more than 1 million people were killed during the Holocaust.

One scene shows a grisly game of chess in which humans are used as pieces and murdered by other prisoners when they are “taken.” The Auschwitz Memorial tweeted an image from the scene showing bodies scattered on the edge of a checkered grass field.

“Hunters” producer David Weil defended the show’s depiction of the Holocaust in response to the memorial’s critique. The show is “inspired by true events” but never billed itself as a documentary, he said.

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Scene from Amazon's "Hunters" starring Al Pacino
Amazon's "Hunters" stars Logan Lerman and Al Pacino.Christopher Saunders/Amazon
Josh Radnor in Amazon's "Hunters"
Josh Radnor in "Hunters"Christopher Saunders/Amazon
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The human chess scene from Amazon's Hunters
The human chess scene
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“Why did I feel this scene was important to script and place in series?” said Weil, who said he is a grandson of Holocaust survivors. “To most powerfully counteract the revisionist narrative that whitewashes Nazi perpetration, by showcasing the most extreme — and representationally truthful — sadism and violence that the Nazis perpetrated against the Jews and other victims.”

The Auschwitz Memorial’s criticism came days after Holocaust education advocates called on Amazon to stop selling books by Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher. The memorial and the UK-based Holocaust Educational Trust said titles like Streicher’s “The Poisoned Mushroom” — which reportedly refers to Jews as a “devil in human form” — don’t belong among the online retail giant’s products.

“It is worrying that distinguished publishers like Amazon would make available products that promote racist or hate speech of any kind, let alone those from the darkest period of European history,” Karen Pollock, the Holocaust Educational Trust’s chief executive, wrote in a Friday letter to Amazon UK.

Amazon removes products that violate its policies governing which books can be sold on its site and invests “significant time and resources” to ensure those rules are followed, an Amazon spokesperson said. “The Poisoned Mushroom” did not appear in an Amazon search Monday morning, though other titles by Streicher were still listed.

“As a bookseller, we believe that providing access to the written word is important, including books that some may find objectionable,” the Amazon spokesperson said in a statement. “We take concerns seriously and are listening to feedback.”

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