Tatiana Navka, wife of Vladimir Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov, appeared on the Russian ice-skating themed reality show Ice Age this weekend in costumes designed to evoke the plight of Jewish concentration camp inmates.
Writing on her Instagram page Ms Navka explained that she was paying tribute to the 1997 Italian movie Life Is Beautiful, which she says is one of her favourite films.
Ms Navka’s performance has been met with disbelief and shock across social media, with many commenters describing the costumes as being in very poor taste.
Holocaust themed skating performance by wife of spokesman for president #Putin. Beyond belief, no words pic.twitter.com/bcPZdfh23R
— Rob S⬅︎Silver Surfer (@RobPulseNews) November 26, 2016
Ilya Averbukh, the choreographer responsible for the routine who is himself a Jew told the popular Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda that he thought the outcry represented an over-reaction.
The Times of Israel quotes him as saying that the response was “a sign of the craziness of today.”
The pair’s skating routine was awarded maximum points by the TV show’s judges.
The performance is not altogether unprecedented. In April of this year one dance featured in Russia’s version of ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ was themed around a Nazi officer’s search for a young Jewish girl who was hiding behind a piano.
