Queensland trade union apologises for Hitler ad
THE Electrical Trade Union (ETU) in Queensland has apologised for using an image of Hitler as part of a full-page ad taken out in Sunday’s The Courier Mail.
THE Electrical Trade Union (ETU) in Queensland has apologised for using an image of Hitler as part of a full-page ad taken out in Sunday’s The Courier Mail.
The ad, which slams new state government industrial relations legislation, features a large photo of Adolf Hitler with a quote from the Nazi dictator: “We must close union offices, confiscate their money and put their leaders in prison.”
ETU state secretary Peter Simpson said he understood the ad could be upsetting to Holocaust survivors, but denied it conflated Queensland Premier Campbell Newman with Hitler.
“If that’s how people took it, if that was the inference, then of course I apologise,” Simpson told The AJN.
“I visited the Holocaust centre and left in tears, so I know better than most what the bastard [Hitler] did … we never intended to cause offence.” Simpson said that while the ETU will continue its campaign, the organisation would not run the ad again.
B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission chairman Dvir Abramovich described the ad as “inappropriate, absurd and deeply offensive”.
“While I am aware that Holocaust analogies get the headlines and generate media attention, they do little in the service of truth, history or memory,” Abramovich said in a statement. “No matter how committed an organisation is to its members and to its mission, invoking the Holocaust and Hitler to make a political point … has no place in civil discourse,” he added.
Simpson said he had been in contact with Jason Steinberg of the Queensland Jewish Board of Deputies (QJBD) in the wake of the controversy and that the pair plans to meet to discuss the matter.
In a statement posted on the QJBD Facebook page, Steinberg condemned the ad, calling it “totally inappropriate and deplorable”.
“The ETU advertisement … tends to diminish the true horror of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust,” Steinberg wrote.
“We hope that every Queenslander will see that analogies between Australian politics and Nazism … have no place in a mainstream newspaper.”
ADAM KAMIEN
B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission chairman Dvir Abramovich.
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