By: Steve Dellar | 11-11-2017 | News
Photo credit: Twitter @SAMAATV

Indonesian Museum Lets You Take Selfie With Hitler In Auschwitz

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An Indonesian wax portrait museum has come under fire this week.

In one of its newly opened rooms, you have on one side Darth Vader from Star Wars, directly opposite is Indonesia's current president, Joko "Jokowi" Widodo and in the middle Adolf Hitler standing in front of a big backdrop of the Auschwitz Birkenau concentration camp where about one million people were killed.

Human Rights Watch has said the exhibit is "sickening" and demanded, together with the Los Angeles based Simon Wiesenthal Center for the immediate removal of the Hitler statue.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Wiesenthal Center said: "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."

The giant image of Auschwitz and the slogan "Arbeit Macht Frei", work sets you free, is on full display behind the Hitler was the figure which seems quite popular with Indonesian youths.

Indonesia of course, just as the rest of Asia, has a history of looking through tainted sunglasses towards Nazism and its symbols. The Indonesian city of Bandung had a Nazi-themed cafe where serving waiters would wear SS uniforms. Given the international anger that it caused the café was closed at the beginning of this year.

And in 2014, a music video made by Indonesian pop stars as a tribute to presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto stirred outrage with its Nazi overtones.

in Asia, the wearing of Nazi symbols is more about a show of strength or an attempt to affiliate oneself with a fringe group, and less about reclaiming the swastika or even being aware of all the details of its violence in Europe.

In many ways, 'Nazi chic' is Southeast Asia's hipster movement.

For Germans visiting India or Pakistan, this is a cringing experience of course. As from a young age, Germans are taught to feel guilty about their past, but when they travel to Asia they see that over there, people see the Nazi history with some sort of respect in fact.

Source:

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/878250/Adolf-Hitler-wax-model-Auschwitz-museum-Indonesia

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1 Comment/s
Anonymous No. 11610 2017-11-11 : 11:06

Of course they like him in Asia, the Nazi swastika is a hindu/buddhist symbol

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