December 07, 2008

The Gutter in the Editorial Department

I posted the previous entry at IBA as well. In a comment there, Amy informed me that:
The picture of Olmert is an obvious take-off of the scene in Schindler's List where Amon Goth, the Nazi commander of the concentration camp, stands on his balcony and uses ramdom prisoners for target practice.
As I haven't seen the film I haven't been aware of that. Thank you Amy!

Liza, who was made aware of the Goeth-connection by a reader as well, has provided the above picture and the link to the Jerusalem Post and an article from July 2006:
Invoking a scene from the film Schindler's List, one of Norway's largest newspapers recently published a political cartoon comparing Prime Minster Ehud Olmert to the infamous commander of a Nazi death camp who indiscriminately murdered Jews by firing at them at random from his balcony.

The caricature by political cartoonist Finn Graff appeared on July 10 in the Oslo daily Dagbladet. It has prompted outrage among the country's small Jewish community and led the Simon Weisenthal Center to submit a protest to the Norwegian government.

In the cartoon, Olmert is likened to SS Major Amon Goeth, the infamous commandant of the Plaszow death camp outside of Krakow, Poland, who was convicted of mass murder in 1946 and hanged for his crimes.

While in charge of Plaszow, Goeth would go out to the balcony on his villa, and engage in target practice by aiming his telescopic rifle and firing at random at Jews imprisoned there, often killing them.
The mind boggles.

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