Adolf Hitler waxwork removed from Indonesian attraction
A life-size model of Adolf Hitler used for ‘selfies’ by visitors to an Indonesian effigy attraction has been removed.
Pictures shared on social media show visitors to the De ARCA Statue Art Museum at Yogyakarta in central Java smiling 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 attraction realised it had caused any offence.
The Museum's Operations Manager, Jamie Misbah, told news agency AFP that it had only wanted to educate, commenting "we don't want to attract outrage.”
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.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, of Jewish human rights organisation The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, 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 17 million people, almost half of whom were European Jews, along with groups including Roma gypsies and Soviet prisoners-of-war, died during the Nazi Holocaust. More than a million were killed at Auschwitz.
Ignorance of the Holocaust is widespread in Indonesia while Human Rights Watch researcher Andreas Harsono suggested interest in the Hitler figure is indicative of 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.
Image: A woman poses with the now removed Adolf Hitler figure at Indonesia’s De ARCA Statue Art Museum.
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