Anti-Semitism group protests Nazi-themed cosmetics ad in South Korea

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
A leading anti-Semitism watchdog group called Friday for a South Korean cosmetics company to halt an ad campaign with Nazi references. The television ad for a skin lotion made by Coreana Cosmetics Co. shows a young woman in a short skirt and military-style trench coat, holding a soldier's cap at her side that appears to have the swastika-gripping eagle Nazi insignia. Background noises of an explosion and crowds cheering in response to a man's unintelligible speech are heard. An earlier version shown in previews and posted on the Web contained the slogan: "Even Hitler didn't have the East and West." The Los Angeles, California-based Simon Wiesenthal Center said in a statement that it sent a letter to company leaders calling for the ad campaign to be withdrawn, citing the Nazi imagery and Hitler slogan. "These images and references are (an) insult to the memory of the victims of the Nazi Holocaust," the center's associate dean Rabbi Abraham Cooper wrote. "Survivors of those atrocities are outraged that their suffering at the hand of these racist murderers is being mocked by such a campaign."