Estonia / 09-09-2012
Concentration camp prisoners “advertised” diet pills
Tallinn – an Estonian newspaper published a satirical ad for weight loss that shows emaciated Jews in Buchenwald: “Mengele’s pills work wonders.”
A cynical exploitation of the Holocaust: the most widespread Estonian weekly magazine “Eesti Ekspress” published in its last issue’s satirical column a mock ad for weight-loss pills which makes fun of prisoners in the Buchenwald camp during World War II.
The caption ”one, two, three. Dr. Mengele’s diet pills work wonders for you. There were no obese people in Buchenwald” was attached to the photograph of the emaciated Jews.
The Wiesenthal Center expressed outrage at the “morbid humor” published in the magazine. In an announcement on behalf of Dr. Ephraim Zuroff, Nazi hunter and Head of the center in Israel, the Center denounced the mock ad.
“It is beyond comprehension that a leading respectable magazine in Estonia, which is a member of high standing of the European Union, would publish such perverse humor at the expense of millions of Nazi victims.” said Dr. Zuroff.
This is by no means the first time these days that the memory of the Holocaust has been inappropriately used. Just a few weeks ago, the local gas company ”GasTerm Eesti” published an ad with a picture of the entranceway to the Auschwitz death camp at its center in order to promote its products.
According to Zuroff “the Eesti Ekspress editors were probably annoyed from the fact that the Estonian Gas company had to remove the ad,” and he added: ”what can you expect in a country that praises its veteran SS people, and that has not succeeded in prosecuting even one of its Nazi collaborators.”
