Alter Hitler figure, British Jewish group asks Madame Tussauds

[The Straight Story]

(JTA) -- A Jewish organization in Britain has called on Madame Tussauds to make its wax replica of Hitler look more defeated.

The UK Zionist Federation told the Evening Standard that making Hitler look more vulnerable and not "upright" could prevent guests from posing next to the figure making the "Sieg Heil" salute.

"I have no problem with Adolf Hitler being displayed," Stefan Kerner, the federation's director of public affairs, told the Evening Standard. "However, we want to display him in a more vulnerable position or situation. Or he could be placed in a way that people can't take photographs beside him."

Additional guards were posted around the Hitler figure after Israeli tourists complained about the salutes. Visitors have been warned against such gestures but they are continuing, according to reports.

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/08/31/3089184/jewish-group-asks-madame-tussauds-to-alter-hitler-figure

[originalpckelly]

1. Personally, I'd like to see him with his head up his own ass.

Unfortunately, though, they wouldn't be able to tell him apart from Fmr. President Bush's statue.

[hlthe2b]

2. Well, he is dead, after all.. that's pretty damned "defeated"

Maybe they should have put him outside to allow for the golden spray salute. :shrug:

[Spider Jerusalem]

3. It's obviously a bit sensitive but quite honestly?

Most of the people who're standing next to the Hitler waxwork and giving the salure (like as not with a finger held over their lip in lieu of a moustache) are doing it as mockery. Not out of sympathy for Hitler or the Nazis. Taking the piss out of Hitler like that is a very British thing to do.

[7AQUINN7]

4. hitler

What is most important is that it be realistic to what he was.
Arrogance was his main trait, it brought him down, so an
arrogant look is what I would prefer, it would show the
inhumaness he had

[The Wielding Truth]

6. I agree and welcome,7AQUINN7.

[pinboy3niner]

7. Certainly a valid point--and welcome to DU, 7AQUINN7

:hi:

[TheWraith]

8. Well said. Welcome to DU. :) nt

[Honeycombe8]

9. I think this is true. The arrogance...the hubris...should be apparent. nt

[Canuckistanian]

5. You know who else ordered wax figures to be altered?

Oh, never mind...

[pinboy3niner]

10. LOL!

Touche.

[Violet_Crumble]

11. We've always found Hitler hilarious – the alternative is much more odious (David Mitchell)

<snip>

When you ban something like this, you only dignify it with significance. You spoil the harmless piss-takers' harmless fun and you justify fascists in their feelings of oppression. You take a stupid gesture out of the realm of mockery and you give it illicit cachet. Whereas, in general, freedom engenders freedom. If you let people do what they like, human decency usually prevails. Anyone doing a Nazi salute and saying "Heil Hitler" for reasons other than a joke is unlikely to garner sympathy. There are always evil, oppressive forces at work on any society but they'll be found wanting in guile if they come at us goose-stepping and shouting "Sieg Heil!" for a second time. The only thing that could make that seem attractive or worth following, even to an idiot, is if it were banned.

It appears that Lord Janner and I fundamentally disagree on the importance of solemnity where discussion of Hitler is concerned. He seems to think that, since the murder of millions isn't funny, there is nothing to laugh at about the Nazis. I think that's nonsense. One of the attributes of the British of which I am most proud is our reaction to Hitler and his regime: both during the war and subsequently, we've always found them so funny, so ridiculous.

It beggars belief, it is positively hilarious, that a whole country fell so completely in thrall to a posturing little prick like Hitler, who needed no help from our propagandists to look daft. There he is in the footage, making his speeches, all weedy and sweaty and cross – and there are the thousands of people cheering him as if he's Elvis. It makes you laugh like Titania falling in love with Bottom.

It's perfectly possible – and important to our understanding of the human condition – to find that amusing, to laugh at the goose-stepping, the shouting and the pomposity, while simultaneously holding in our heads the tragic murderous consequences of Nazi power. That's what makes the joke bite and also what reminds us that the massive disaster was human.

Churchill got this. It was no accident that he insisted on mispronouncing Nazi as "nar-zee" and referred disparagingly to "Corporal Hitler". He wasn't underestimating the scale of the threat or making light of people's suffering. But he knew it was vital to remember that the evil men who were jeopardising civilisation were also risible little twerps.

Many second world war veterans were accustomed to joking about Hitler. Spike Milligan and his contemporaries founded a comic tradition of making fun of the Nazis which has given us Peter Sellers's performance in Dr Strangelove, "The Germans" episode of Fawlty Towers, Dad's Army, 'Allo 'Allo!, endless YouTube resubtitlings of Downfall and Prince Harry's party gear. Just because the wartime generation has largely gone, we mustn't lose our comic nerve. While we must never forget the scale and severity of Hitler's crimes, we will have lost something precious if we start taking him seriously.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/28/hitler-madame-tussauds-david-mitchell

[Hardrada]

12. Hitler has only got one ball. Goering has two but

they are very small.
Himmler has something similar
But poor old Goebbels
Has no balls at all!!