"Whatever you do...don't mention the war."
Posted on 01/31/2006 3:21:42 PM PST by Aussie Dasher
A GERMAN newspaper has apologised for accidentally placing a utility company advertisement for "the gas of tomorrow" inside a full-page story on the Nazi killing of Sinti (Gypsy) people in Auschwitz concentration camp.
The Landeszeitung Lueneburg said on its website today it had not noticed that the article about a local exhibition describing the fate of the Sinti in Hitler's Germany appeared on the same page as an advert for utility company E.ON which read: "E.ON is taking care of the gas of tomorrow, today." The Nazis used poison gas for mass killings in World War II. It is estimated that between 200,000 and 800,000 of the millions who were killed in the Holocaust were Sinti and Roma, two branches of the Gypsies.
The paper, which has received numerous complaints about the position of the advertisement, said it deeply regretted the incident which was unintentional and "simply overlooked".
"We apologise for this mistake, which both contradicts the article's intention of shedding light on an almost forgotten chapter of National Socialism, and also undeservedly casts the utility in a questionable light," it said in a statement.
The paper devoted a page of its January 21-22 edition to the story From Lueneburg to Auschwitz which featured pictures of the death camp and Sinti victims of Nazi persecution.
But the editors unwittingly slotted in the advert, which covered about a third of the page, right alongside it.
A spokesman for E.ON said the firm had had no control over where the advert appeared and wanted to put the matter behind it now that the newspaper had apologised for the error.
What a gas.
Duh....
Absolutely AWFUL.
Other than that, it was a great idea.
Send them to tolerance camp.
boy those nazis have got a sense of humor, don't they. oops i mean germans.
That's almost as rich as the Japanese car commercial that aired with
the tune from "The Bridge Over The River Kwai".
I grimmaced the first time I heard it...within a week complaints drove
it off the air.
I think it was Nissan.
Perhaps, though if you read the article, it's not about slaughtering Jews.
Stupid headline ping.
Enough to give a person the vapors.
With the Germans, everything is gas.
IIRC, there was a similar gaffe on US television, long ago. Someone here will know the particulars.
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I saw an ad once in the Hartford Courant run by a local auto dealer wherein he referred to his end-of-year sale as "The Final Solution". I called him about and he seemed genuinely confused at the volume of calls he was getting.
I believe it was soap commercials during airings of Sophie's Choice.
Many Jews were gassed, so I can certainly see them being offended at the insensitivity of the paper.
"Whatever you do...don't mention the war."
I could too. If it's deliberate, which I doubt, I'd be offended.
That might have happened too, but I'm dimly recalling something older, involving a gas utility and -- Judgement at Nuremberg?
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