Turkish TV Ad Features Hitler to Sell Shampoo


Speigel.de

March 26, 2012


Hair Product for 'Real Men'

An archive image of Adolf Hitler delivering a speech in 1933.Zoom
DPA
An archive image of Adolf Hitler delivering a speech in 1933.
A Turkish TV commercial has sparked international criticism for featuring Adolf Hitler to praise the virtues of a "hundred percent men's shampoo." Critics have called it "repulsive," but it follows a controversial trend among firms to sell their wares with supposedly humorous references to Hitler and the Nazi era.

A Turkish cosmetics company is under fire for featuring Adolf Hitler in a television advert for men's shampoo, but it continues to run on the country's state television network despite widespread outrage.


The 12-second commercial shows black-and-white footage of Hitler delivering an impassioned speech, dubbed with a high-pitched voice screaming the following words in clipped Turkish:
"Why are you using woman's shampoo if you're not wearing a woman's dress? Now there's the hundred percent men's shampoo Biomen. A real man uses Biomen."
Media reports said that Turkish state television has so far declined to remove the commercial, despite criticism from Jewish groups in Turkey and abroad. The US-based Anti-Defamation League released a statement saying it was "repulsed" at the commercial.
"The use of images of the violently anti-Semitic dictator who was responsible for the mass murder of 6 million Jews and millions of others in the Holocaust to sell shampoo is a disgusting and deplorable marketing ploy," Abraham Foxman, the ADL's national director, said in a statement.

"It is an insult to the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust, those who survived, and those who fought to defeat the Nazis. This video is just the latest example of the use of Holocaust imagery in some countries to sell commercial products, which has contributed to the trivialization of and desensitization to the unparalleled horrors of the Holocaust," it continued.
"There can never be any justifiable purpose for using the images of Hitler, Nazis or any other depiction of the Nazi killing machine to sell products or services."
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