Just found this article, rather interesting:
Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s notorious hideaway headquarters in the Bavarian Alps, is now being promoted as the ideal vacation get-away for thigh-slapping, local dancing, and yodeling, Israel's Arutz-7 reports. Sixty years after the liberation of Aucshwitz, Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s notorious hideaway headquarters in the Bavarian Alps, is now being promoted as a "cozy" vacation resort hotel.
In a marketing blitz that appears to have come straight out of the script of "The Producers" - Mel Brooks’ long-running bitter Broadway satire on Hitler and the Nazis - the InterContinental Hotels’ sales pitch for the alpine site proclaims: "Berchtesgaden: It’s not a peak, it’s a treat."
In the Winter 2005 edition of the hotel chain’s magazine "Highstyle," Berchtesgaden has been repackaged as an idyllic get-away locale for "thigh-slapping, local dancing" and "a particularly fine spot for yodeling." It was once better known for having been the place where Hitler planned out and made many of the key decisions of World War II that resulted in the deaths of 60-70 million people, including six million Jews.
"Unfortunately, Berchtesdaden holds a more sinister significance," said Dr. Shimon Samuels, director for international liaison for the Wiesenthal Center, the institute dedicated to preserving the memory of the Holocaust. "It was the seat of evil, where Adolf Hitler, Hermann Goering, Joseph Goebbels and the Nazi leadership took most of the decisions that cost the world 70 million lives."
Incensed over turning the Berchtesgaden complex, where Hitler also had a home away from home, into a vacation spa, Samuels wrote a sharply worded letter to the hotel chain. Samuels wrote, "A decade ago, I visited Berchtesgaden with BBC television and engaged in a debate with the German Institute for Contemporary History in Munich on how to best prevent the banalization committed by your magazine and [instead] ensure that every visitor include in his itinerary the Berchtesgaden Documentation Center and the memorial to the victims of Nazism."
Samuels expressed revulsion over the hotel magazine’s suggestion for prospective Berchtesgaden vacationers to ‘descend into the bowels of the earth’ in a tour of the nearby Salzbergwerk salt mines. He wrote that the Nazi death camps were "a place in which millions, indeed, descended ‘into the bowels of the earth’ never to return."
He added, "This dishonors the memory of all the victims of Nazism, offends the survivors and teaches tomorrow’s murderers that scenic beauty can camouflage and efface their atrocities."
Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of The David S. Wyman Institute of Holocaust Studies, also responded harshly to the possibility of having happy vacationers strolling merrily in the meadows and fields where Adolph and Eva once romped:
"In the 1930s, the British magazine Homes and Gardens helped whitewash Hitler’s image by running articles glamorizing his country home. The publisher of the magazine, IPC Media, recently acknowledged that historic error and publicly apologized. Now another British magazine has in effect whitewashed Hitler anew, by glamorizing Berchtesgaden again and ignoring its connection to the Nazis. We urge the publisher of Highstyle to follow in the footsteps of IPC Media by apologizing for this grievous wrong and inserting appropriate historical information in its descriptions about Berchtesgaden."
Berchtesgaden, the vacation resort, is scheduled to open for business in March of 2005
Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s notorious hideaway headquarters in the Bavarian Alps, is now being promoted as the ideal vacation get-away for thigh-slapping, local dancing, and yodeling, Israel's Arutz-7 reports. Sixty years after the liberation of Aucshwitz, Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s notorious hideaway headquarters in the Bavarian Alps, is now being promoted as a "cozy" vacation resort hotel.
In a marketing blitz that appears to have come straight out of the script of "The Producers" - Mel Brooks’ long-running bitter Broadway satire on Hitler and the Nazis - the InterContinental Hotels’ sales pitch for the alpine site proclaims: "Berchtesgaden: It’s not a peak, it’s a treat."
In the Winter 2005 edition of the hotel chain’s magazine "Highstyle," Berchtesgaden has been repackaged as an idyllic get-away locale for "thigh-slapping, local dancing" and "a particularly fine spot for yodeling." It was once better known for having been the place where Hitler planned out and made many of the key decisions of World War II that resulted in the deaths of 60-70 million people, including six million Jews.
"Unfortunately, Berchtesdaden holds a more sinister significance," said Dr. Shimon Samuels, director for international liaison for the Wiesenthal Center, the institute dedicated to preserving the memory of the Holocaust. "It was the seat of evil, where Adolf Hitler, Hermann Goering, Joseph Goebbels and the Nazi leadership took most of the decisions that cost the world 70 million lives."
Incensed over turning the Berchtesgaden complex, where Hitler also had a home away from home, into a vacation spa, Samuels wrote a sharply worded letter to the hotel chain. Samuels wrote, "A decade ago, I visited Berchtesgaden with BBC television and engaged in a debate with the German Institute for Contemporary History in Munich on how to best prevent the banalization committed by your magazine and [instead] ensure that every visitor include in his itinerary the Berchtesgaden Documentation Center and the memorial to the victims of Nazism."
Samuels expressed revulsion over the hotel magazine’s suggestion for prospective Berchtesgaden vacationers to ‘descend into the bowels of the earth’ in a tour of the nearby Salzbergwerk salt mines. He wrote that the Nazi death camps were "a place in which millions, indeed, descended ‘into the bowels of the earth’ never to return."
He added, "This dishonors the memory of all the victims of Nazism, offends the survivors and teaches tomorrow’s murderers that scenic beauty can camouflage and efface their atrocities."
Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of The David S. Wyman Institute of Holocaust Studies, also responded harshly to the possibility of having happy vacationers strolling merrily in the meadows and fields where Adolph and Eva once romped:
"In the 1930s, the British magazine Homes and Gardens helped whitewash Hitler’s image by running articles glamorizing his country home. The publisher of the magazine, IPC Media, recently acknowledged that historic error and publicly apologized. Now another British magazine has in effect whitewashed Hitler anew, by glamorizing Berchtesgaden again and ignoring its connection to the Nazis. We urge the publisher of Highstyle to follow in the footsteps of IPC Media by apologizing for this grievous wrong and inserting appropriate historical information in its descriptions about Berchtesgaden."
Berchtesgaden, the vacation resort, is scheduled to open for business in March of 2005
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