Turkey’s Jewish protest at shampoo ad showing Hitler

Turkey’s Jewish community has protested a Turkish commercial that uses old film footage of Adolf Hitler to sell shampoo.

The commercial, for a men’s shampoo called Biomen, shows Hitler delivering an enthusiastic speech, urging male viewers to buy the product, which is “a 100 percent male shampoo.” In the ad, Hitler says, “If you are not wearing a woman’s dress, you should not use her shampoo either.”

Turkish Jewish community representatives and Turkey’s chief rabbi’s office on Monday called Hitler “the most striking example of cruelty and savagery” and said that using his image in such a commercial was unacceptable. The statement also demanded a public apology from the advertising company “to repair the damage this commercial has caused to society’s conscience.”

“Using Hitler, whose brutal ideology caused the deaths of millions of people, in a commercial in order to be different or create awareness [of a product] is unacceptable,” said the statement posted on the Istanbul Chief Rabbinate’s website. The rabbinate also contacted Istanbul-based Biota Laboratories — which makes Biomen — to ask them to pull the ad, but the company has so far declined to scrap it, arguing the commercial was intended to be humorous, Jewish community leader Silvyo Ovadya told Reuters.

No one from Biota was immediately available to comment on the ad or the rabbinate’s complaint. “We will pursue legal means now,” Ovadya said. “The ad is also demeaning to women.”

He did not elaborate on what legal means the community might pursue. In Turkey, the Industry Ministry’s advertising commission oversees the content of television advertising and is authorized to pull commercials and issue financial penalties for those that violate broadcasting standards.

The United States-based Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which fights anti-Semitism, also said it was “repulsed.” Using Hitler, “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,” said Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the ADL and a Holocaust survivor, in a statement posted online last Friday. “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.”

Foxman said in a letter he sent to Turkish Ambassador to the U.S. Namık Tan that the ADL is calling on Turkey’s government to make clear the offensive nature of this advertisement. “That this advertisement was created in Turkey, for a Turkish audience, when Turkey is so justifiably proud of its history as a haven for Jews, and in light of its recent projects promoting education about and awareness of the Holocaust, is particularly troubling,” the ADL stated in the letter.

About 20,000 Jews live in Turkey, mainly in Istanbul, a city of some 14 million Muslims. Most are descendants of Sephardim who escaped the Spanish Inquisition and found refuge in the Ottoman Empire some 500 years ago. <Cihan/Todays Zaman>

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