- BERLIN (Reuters) - A waxworks
museum in Berlin that featured a life-size figure of Nazi dictator Adolf
Hitler has proved to be so controversial it is to be shut down.
-
- In a reminder of how sensitive an issue Germany's Nazi
past remains almost 60 years after the end of World War II, the German
bank which owns the building housing the "Galerie Art'el" and
its effigy of Hitler has asked the museum to leave.
-
- "I had to get rid of Hitler," said museum director
Inna Vollstaedt on Friday. "My landlords have canceled my lease and
told me to close from today. I'm very disappointed."
-
- Vollstaedt said the bank was worried about being associated
with the Nazis and wanted her out as soon as possible.
-
- "They were tired of being continually hassled on
the phone. Apparently people have been out on the streets protesting about
the figure in Israel," said the Russian-born Vollstaedt.
-
- The Wuerttembergische Hypothekenbank, who Vollstaedt
said owns the real estate firm that the building belongs to, was not immediately
available for comment.
-
- The wax Hitler shared a room with his wartime adversaries
the Soviet Union's Joseph Stalin, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt
and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill overlooking Checkpoint Charlie,
the former Cold War border crossing between East and West Berlin.
-
- Germany's biggest-selling newspaper Bild described the
waxworks, which include figures such as Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates
and Diana, Princess of Wales, a "macabre show."
-
- "This figure should be banned before Checkpoint
Charlie becomes a place of pilgrimage for neo-Nazis,"Bild quoted Lea
Rosh, the woman who launched a campaign for a memorial in Berlin to victims
of the Holocaust, as saying.
-
- Vollstaedt, who said she had lost half her relatives
in the 900-day Nazi siege of Leningrad during the war, dismissed suggestions
she had been trying to glorify Hitler and blamed the press for the furor.
-
- "The visitors who came to see him said the press
were wrong to get so worked up about it," she said. "They said
they were glad to be able to show their children this appalling man who
started the war and did so many terrible things."
-
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-
-
- Comment
From Ron Palmer
- 3-25-4
-
- Hi Jeff.
-
- Just a brief comment on http://www.rense.com/general50/germanmusevumevicted.htm
German Museum Evicted Over Wax Hitler Figure.
-
- This museum also features a wax figure of Joseph Stalin
as well - who killed at least 3 times as many people (estimates run to
over 50 million) as Hitler did and was just as much a brutal tyrant, yet
there does not appear to be much controversy surrounding his image.
-
- Similar to the disparity of controversial reaction surrounding
Soviet Communist symbols versus Nazi Germany symbols. Both of these regime's
symbols and their political leaders are abhorrent and represent brutal
totalitarian inhumane regimes. But...there is typically a conspicuous lack
of controversy and outrage surrounding Soviet images and symbols as compared
to those of National Socialist Germany.
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