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 being investigated 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. 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.
It was just a matter of time, a few minutes in this case.
Too bad no German had the balls to do this back in 1939.
I wonder what’s going to happen when they open the George W. Bush museum…
Also,
“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”.
So, what would be in good taste? “An ecstatic looking Hitler signing the Final Solution”??!!
#2
No worry… 50 years from now Bush will be seen for the incompetent asshole that he is recognized as being even now… similar to what Jesse Helms is seen like just one day after his death (good riddance… I spit on his grave.) There will be no statues or memorials for Bush II, just revulsion for his memory and for the fools that put him in power and supported him.
Even SMU in Dallas is having second thoughts on building his presidential library… they are thinking of allocating a broken restroom in a soon to be torn down building for the task.
I’d like to hear the “pro” reasons for including Hitler in this particular collection.
I could see it in a museum of world history, or of WW2, or of Germany==but why with pop stars and sports heros?
I think the museum screwed up.
Now I do think a museum with Hitler and Bush together (Stalin, Pol Pot, Fu Manchu) would be appropriate and I would like to have the rotten egg concession.
Further, what’s the point of the endless TV expositions on the Hitlery* channel?
*Somebody told me that the name of this channel is actually the “History” channel. Pretty funny!
It might be handy to have a wax Hitler head to hold while posing for a group photo. Just imagine a school class photo that shows Hitler peeking out from amongst your classmates and I think you can see the value of having one of these wax heads.
Let’s prosecute the director for violating their anti-Nazi promotion laws too.
this is art poeple.hitler is popular now as he was then.dont poeple see he was just trying to ride europe of foriegn influences.in a sick kinda way.he wasnt the only one behind the halocoust.also america did nothing even after we knew of the camps for months.learn your history poeple,even thousands of prisoners died in the russian camps after the war including innocent poeple and nobody ever talks of them.the soviets are just as guily as hitler.
So,… That makes Hitler Ok?
I guess they didn’t save Hitler’s brain after all..
#1
The german people were so destroyed by the world depression, corruot officials and war reparation that they welcomed ANY guy that had ideas to put people back to work, get food in their bellies and RETURN to the prosperoty before the war.
Does that sound familiar? EVERY politcian promises that.
Hitler became beloved by that generation because HE actually kept his promises. BUT it doesn’t excuse his actions to get there or what came afterwards.
They didn’t WANT to kill a man that made promises and kept them. Neither would most naive people. Even in the US it works. Optimistic naive fools that think CHANGE is coming.
To us cynics we would never believe in change. Because we have learned that 95% of the time these political bastards LIE. Hitler would have surprised us. But as cynics we would ask the usual question…
“Yeah he made an autobahn, big deal! What is THAT going to cost us?”
Cynics are hard to satisfy. It is very rare to do so. But we are needed to knock down the big-headed, swaggering egotists that think they create things better than sliced bread.
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#5
Tussauds routinely adds persons from the history of the particular country that a museum is built.
WHO would you have in German History there that modern people would even recognise?????
Kaiser Wilhelm II?
Charlegmange?
Hans Holbein?
Wernher von Braun?
I don’t think many readers of this blog could pick these people out from pictures without the help of wikipedia or google image search. I know I couldn’t for Hans Holbein (younger or elder) and Kaiser Wilhelm.
Get real. Hitler is instantly recognisable by modern people. In 200 years even he will not be instantly recognisable! For all we know the likeness will get picked up by some comedian or in some teen sex movie and he will be remembered as that funny guy that kept sticking his hand up in the air.
I mean look at Napoleon. He is only remembered now as a short french dude. Julius Caesar if you ask many common people will either be refered to as that dude that made salad or that dude that makes orange malt shakes at the mall.
Yeah I could just see the Wernher Von Braun exhibit. With the catch phrase of “Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down
That’s not my department.”
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Something very similar occurred in the Venezuelan Andes to a glass effigy of the “Che” Guevara that our sorry government put up to glorify the communist assassin.
Being made of glass and given the high level of rejection the Che image gets, the so-called monument was begging for vandalism and lasted only hours.
I take it if the wax statue were exhibited in the USA (or Japan) he would be praised?
Angry liberal children would be taken more seriously if they could remember to knock a left wing extremist (that would be Hitler) when knocking the right wing extremist they’ve failed to mitigate after all these years.
Your worship of the right wing is noted.