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.
Right you are.
http://www.tvacres.com/censorship_playhouse.htm
I also doubt that it was intentional; however, one can still be offended at the thoughtlessness. It would be akin to reading a story on the horrors that faced the people trapped in the burning WTC Towers on 9/11 and in the middle of the story, finding an ad for a job placement service that read "Are you so sick of your job, you're ready to jump out the window?" or an ad for a cruise to a cool climate like Alaska that read "So hot you feel like you're on fire sometimes?". One wouldn't think someone could be that tasteless on purpose, but you'd probably still think "geez, if these people actually thought about what they were doing for 2 seconds, this wouldn't have happened".
That's it, thanks.
Sounds like a good spot for an ad featuring your local Mosque.
Was he selling German cars, or perhaps Fords?
Actually it was a Ford dealer located in West Hartford, a largely Jewish community. Out of business these days for some reason.
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