Adolf Hitler waxwork removed from Indonesian museum
A life-size model of Adolf Hitler used for "selfies" by visitors to an Indonesian museum has been removed.
Pictures
shared on social media show people grinning as they pose with the Nazi
leader in front of an image of the gates of Auschwitz concentration
camp.
It was only when the international community reacted with
outrage that the De ARCA Statue Art Museum realised it had caused any
offence.
The museum, in Jogjakarta, Java, said it had only wanted to educate.
"We don't want to attract outrage," the museum's operations manager, Jamie Misbah, told news agency AFP.
Pictures on social media show numerous people posing with the
fibreglass statue, including a group of young boys dressed in orange
uniforms performing a Nazi salute.
It has left many around the world sickened - even if, as the museum originally said, no visitor had actually complained.
Rabbi
Abraham Cooper, of Jewish human rights organisation The Simon
Wiesenthal Center, told news agency AP: "Everything about it is wrong.
It's hard to find words for how contemptible it is.
"The background is disgusting. It mocks the victims who went in and never came out."
An
estimated 1.1 million people, mainly European Jews, but also groups
including Roma gypsies and Soviet prisoners-of-war, died at Auschwitz
during the Holocaust.
Some people have blamed a lack of education
about the Holocaust on the lack of sensitivity, but Human Rights Watch
researcher Andreas Harsono suggested it revealed anti-Jewish feeling in
the world's most populous Muslim nation.
The display, one of about 80 in the museum, came less than a year after a Nazi-themed cafe was shut down in Bandung, Java.
BBC
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