Australians with links to the Holocaust are shocked and sickened by a board game which assigns players to roles in the Nazi bid for power ahead of World War II.
The sight of the game, Secret Hitler, being sold in several major games retailers, has led to about 10 complaints to the Anti-Defamation Commission, a Jewish organisation combating anti-Semitism, in the past week.
A daughter of a Holocaust survivor shook when she saw the game in a toy store in Bright.
“I started shaking, I literally saw the Holocaust flash in front of me. I felt as if there were Nazis about to storm into the store. I could barely look at the shopkeeper,” she wrote in her complaint.
“I felt anti-Semitism alive. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.”
A grandchild of the Holocaust, in which millions of Jews were killed, said she felt nauseated.
“I was absolutely horrified to see the atrocities of Hitler and his regime played out in a game,” Simone said in a statement on Friday.
The product states it is a social deduction game for up to 10 people to find and stop the “Secret Hitler” among the two teams of liberals and fascists.
But ADC chairman Dvir Abramovich told AAP the game had unsettled Jewish people.
“Everyone is revolted and disgusted that a board game bearing that name and revolving around Hitler, whose many victims live in Melbourne and in other cities, is being sold in stores here,” Dr Abramovich said.
“Anyone who suffered under Hitler, or lost families at the hands of the Nazis, would not find this playful and amusing.”
The game has been available in Australia since 2017 and is also sold in the US and Canada.