In November 2023, news spread on the Internet that British customs had seized 30 exhibits from the Body Worlds: Kyiv exhibition, which, as it turned out, were made from the bodies of dead Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers. We decided to check if anything like this actually happened.
Users of social networks spoke about the scandalous cancellation of the exhibition and the arrest of exhibits (“VKontakte", TikTok, X), blog platforms (“Zen", LiveJournal) And forums. The news spread widely on Telegram - in particular, the channels “Mislivets Egor"(68,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Voenndelo (Military Affairs)"(60,000), "Palestine | Hamas Exxxclusive"(52,000), etc. Almost identical posts claim that the Ukrainians took out the bodies and then sold them to the creators of the exhibition using forged documents without the permission of relatives - it was because of problems with the papers that the exhibits were detained by British customs. As evidence, many publications used a news story allegedly filmed by journalists from the British newspaper The Telegraph.
Body Worlds - a series of exhibitions that has existed since 1995, the exhibits of which are made from real human bodies. Organizers say the concept “takes visitors on an immersive journey under the skin,” “provides a broad understanding of the anatomy and physiology of the human body,” “shows the long-term impact of diseases and addictions such as tobacco or alcohol use, and demonstrates the mechanics of artificial knees or hips.” The exhibits were made using the method plastination — embalming and preservation of anatomical preparations through the replacement of water and lipids in biological tissues with synthetic polymers and resins.
The story about the scandalous cancellation of the exhibition, allegedly filmed by The Telegraph, is a video lasting just under one and a half minutes, which consists of cutting photographs and videos related to Body Worlds, Ukraine, the work of British customs services, etc. The video uses the logo of the British publication, as well as subtitles with a retelling of the news and voice-over music. The authors of the video also quote Gunther von Hagens, a German anatomist, developer of the plastination technique and founder of the Body Worlds exhibitions: “I was misled that the bodies were obtained legally. It is difficult to imagine that in the civilized world it is possible to sell the bodies of the dead without the knowledge of their families. Without realizing it, I was involved in a fraudulent scheme, and I apologize to the families of the military personnel who were affected by it.”
Not on the website The Telegraph, nor on the publication’s social networks (YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, X) there is no video or even news about the cancellation of the anatomical exhibition Body Worlds: Kyiv and the arrest of exhibits intended for it. “Verified” was unable to find similar publications in other British media. There are no reports of the incident on the airport’s official websites. Heathrow, where the arrest of the exhibits allegedly took place, the police London And surroundings And government Great Britain (since this is allegedly an international scandal, there is a high probability that such news could appear here too). Nor could a quotation attributed to von Hagens be found in any authoritative sources.
Fact checkers from the publication “Gvara Media” analyzed video distributed under the guise of a story by The Telegraph, and found that it did not contain a single original footage related to the news being covered. The video consists entirely of photos and fragments of other videos that are freely available. For example, the footage of the exhibits at the 35th second of the video is taken from roller about plastination, posted on the exhibition’s YouTube channel back in November 2017.
Footage of inspections at British customs taken from roller, which was posted on TikTok by user snl.dunham on October 15, 2023. Based on the information in this video, the baggage search took place at London Gatwick Airport, not Heathrow, and the suitcases were found to contain smuggled cigarettes, not fake documents or anatomical exhibits.
A photo of a customs officer filling out certain documents has also been in the public domain for many years and used in many feature articles in different languages.
“Verified” was also unable to confirm that the exhibition to which the viral video is dedicated was even planned to be held in London. Body Worlds on an ongoing basis passes in five cities around the world: Berlin, Heidelberg and Guben (Germany), Amsterdam (Netherlands) and San Jose (USA). The schedule of planned temporary exhibitions does not include an exhibition in London. The Body Worlds website does not mention events at all with Kyiv in the name, either planned or cancelled. It was not possible to find announcements of an exhibition with this name in specialized media and on websites about events in London. All mentions of Body Worlds in connection with the Ukrainian capital, other than the news being analyzed, are dedicated to the temporary exposition, held in Kyiv in 2019.
The earliest publication of a message about the scandalous cancellation of the exhibition, which “Verified” was able to find, was published in the Telegram channel “Shkvarka News» November 9, 2023 at 15:36 Moscow time. The post indicates that the news was received from a subscriber. This is not the first time that the channel, citing information allegedly sent by readers, begins to spread fake news about Ukraine. For example, previously “Verified” had already refuted the news that in Berlin there was a bus with the inscription “Zelensky is a black hole"accidentally ended up in a TV report about the energy crisis or that anti-Ukrainian graffiti with the slogan "Glory to Urine"
Thus, there is no evidence that exhibits for the Body Worlds exhibition, made from the bodies of dead Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers without the permission of their families and brought with forged documents, were actually seized in London. Moreover, there is not a single credible evidence that such an exhibition was ever planned to be held in the British capital. The video used as evidence, allegedly released by The Telegraph newspaper, is not available on the publication’s website or social networks, although the video was created from publicly available materials. The first to write about the scandal was the pro-Russian Telegram channel, which had previously been repeatedly noticed in distributing fakes.
Cover photo: Instagram koerperwelten
Read on the topic:
- "Gvara Media". The Telegraph: the exhibition Body Worlds: Kyiv was presented through additional documents
- Is it true that an Israeli pastry chef baked a cake with the hanged Vladimir Zelensky?
- Is it true that the Euronews channel published a report about a Ukrainian who damaged a sculpture in Paris?
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