History Forum / General / British History / July 2008

DSH
Lux et Veritas et Libertas
Vires et Honor
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Hmmmmmm...

We need symbolic acts of civil disobedience such as this -- just as we have
by anti-war protestors.

DSH
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Man rips head from Hitler wax figure Sat Jul 5, 2:21 PM ET

BERLIN (Reuters) - A man tore the head from a controversial waxwork figure
of Adolf Hitler on the opening day of Berlin's Madame Tussauds museum on
Saturday, police said.

Just minutes after the museum opened, the 41-year-old German man pushed
aside two security men guarding the exhibit.

"Then he went over to the figure and ripped off the head," a police
spokesman said.

The man tore off the head in protest at the exhibit, the spokesman added.
The police were alerted and arrested the man, who did not resist. He was
later released though he remained under investigation for assault and
damaging property.

The waxwork figure of a glum-looking Adolf Hitler in a mock bunker during
the last days of his life was criticized as being in bad taste. A media
preview of the new branch of Madame Tussauds on Thursday was overshadowed by
a row over the exhibit.

Critics said it was inappropriate to display the Nazi dictator, who started
World War Two and ordered the extermination of Europe's Jews, in a museum
alongside celebrities, pop stars, world statesmen and sporting heroes.

Dressed in a grey suit, the figure of Hitler gazed downwards with a
despondent stare, his arm outstretched on a large wooden table with a map of
Europe on the wall of his gloomy bunker.

About 25 workers spent about four months on the waxwork, using more than
2,000 pictures and pieces of archive material and also guided by a model of
the "Fuehrer" in the London branch of Madame Tussauds where it is standing
upright.

It is illegal in Germany to show Nazi symbols and art glorifying Hitler and
the exhibit was cordoned off to stop visitors posing with him.

Unobtrusive signs asked visitors to refrain from taking photos or posing
with Hitler "out of respect for the millions of people who died during World
War Two." Camera surveillance and museum officials were meant to stop
inappropriate behavior.

Institutions such as the foundation for Germany's central Holocaust memorial
site condemned the idea of the exhibit as tasteless, saying it had been
included to generate business.

The wax figure is the latest in a gradual breaking down of taboos about
Hitler in Germany more than 60 years after the end of the war and the
Holocaust in which some six million Jews were killed.

The 2004 film "Downfall" provoked controversy as it portrayed the leader in
a human light during the last days of his life and last year a satire about
Hitler by Swiss-born Jewish director Dani Levy was released in Germany.

(Reporting by Paul Carrel and Sabine Ehrhardt; editing by Ibon
Villelabeitia)
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_Downfall_ [Der Untergang] is a SUPERB FILM.

MUST VIEWING.

DSH

Lux et Veritas et Libertas