This past Saturday at WWE WrestleMania 39, Rey Mysterio finally got revenge on his son, Dominik, after months of being tormented by The Judgment Day. Ahead of their big match, both men made iconic entrances to the ring. Rey was the second one down the ramp and initially came out in a low-rider with Snoop Dogg as Gin & Juice rang out in the arena before flipping tracks to the Los Guerreros WWE theme and finally, his own.
Dominik’s entrance was less playful, after an opening montage featuring various prison-themed video snippets, a police van backed into the arena. Flanked by police officers, Dominik emerged from the van decked out in his Mania gear and wearing his father’s mask. The entire display was inspired by Dominik’s claim that he did time in jail following an assault on his family home during Christmas Eve of last year, alongside Rhea Ripley.
In the moment, it was two very dramatic entrances that grabbed the crowd and set the stage well for a generational battle. Unfortunately, someone in WWE production somehow got ahold of imagery from Auschwitz, the notorious concentration camp from World War 2, and spliced it into the montage that played before Dominik emerged from the police van.
The Auschwitz Musem Memorial caught wind of the incident and weighed in on social media a few days ago.
“The fact that Auschwitz image was used to promote a WWE match is hard to call ‘an editing mistake,'” the statement began. “Exploiting the site that became a symbol of enormous human tragedy is shameless and insults the memory of all victims of Auschwitz.”
WWE had remained silent on the matter until asked for comment earlier today by NBC News.
“We had no knowledge of what was depicted,” the WWE spokesperson said. “As soon as we learned, it was removed immediately. We apologize for this error.”
The Auschwitz imagery has been scrubbed from WWE’s official archives for WrestleMania 39.
Stay with Haus of Wrestling for all the latest coming out of WWE WrestleMania 39.