Netflix has heard Poland loud and clear. On Thursday, the streaming service confirmed that it will make amendments to the true-crime docuseries The Devil Next Door, after Polish premier Mateusz Morawiecki wrote a strongly worded letter lambasting maps featured in the show, according to Variety. The amendment is one of a handful of notable changes Netflix has made to its original programs after receiving international pressure, like its decision to remove an episode of Hasan Minhaj’s Patriot Act in Saudi Arabia at the behest of the country’s government.
The Devil Next Door revolves around the trial of John Demjanjuk, a man accused of being “Ivan the Terrible,” a particularly notorious Nazi concentration camp guard. The maps featured in the series showed Holocaust-era death camps like Sobibor and Treblinka in Poland, but does not acknowledge that the country was then under Nazi Germany control. In his letter, Morawiecki claimed the map was both incorrect and also “deceives viewers into believing” that Poland was responsible for both setting up the camps and for the crimes committed within the camps. In a statement to Variety, Netflix stood by the Devil Next Door team, but said it would make tweaks.
“We are hugely proud of The Devil Next Door and stand by its filmmakers, their research and their work,” the streamer said. “In order to provide more information to our members about the important issues raised in this documentary and to avoid any misunderstanding, in the coming days we will be adding text to some of the maps featured in the series.”
“This will make it clearer that the extermination and concentration camps in Poland were built and operated by the German Nazi regime, [which] invaded the country and occupied it from 1939–1945,” the statement continued.
As the New York Times notes, Poland is highly sensitive about the language and characterization of the Nazi Germany occupation and the implication that the country was responsible for the camps. In his letter, Morawiecki even went so far as to accuse The Devil Next Door of “to an extent obfuscating historical facts and whitewashing actual perpetrators of these crimes.”
Though a source tells Variety that Netflix wasn’t specifically yielding to Morawiecki, this isn’t the first time the streamer has made a change to its programming after facing international pressure. In a recent interview, Netflix CEO and chairman Reed Hastings spoke about the streamer’s decision to remove an episode of Patriot Act in Saudi Arabia because the episode was critical of the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. “We’re not in the news business,” Hastings said when asked about it at the New York Times’ DealBook conference. “We’re not trying to do ‘truth to power.’ We’re trying to entertain…We don’t feel bad about that at all.”
The Devil Next Door, a five-episode series directed by Yossi Bloch and Daniel Sivan, premiered one week ago. It is unclear when the tweaks to the maps will be made.
— Our cover story: John Legend and Chrissy Teigen on love and resistance in the age of Trump
— Plus: Watch the first couple we deserve give each other a lie detector test
— RuPaul announces Drag Race spin-off featuring only celebrity contestants
— Game of Thrones’ Night King first looked completely different—for a reason
— Get your first look at the new Star Wars assassin from The Mandalorian
— The celebrity-NBA Twitter account you don’t want to miss
— From the archive: The man Hollywood trusted with its secrets
Looking for more? Sign up for our daily Hollywood newsletter and never miss a story.
