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Gary Fitleberg is a political analyst specializing in International Relations with an emphasis on Middle East affairs.
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By Gary Fitleberg
February 13, 2005
The Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a protest yesterday to InterContinental Hotels Group over an article in the British-based hotel chain's magazine, which portrayed Adolf Hitler's former mountain retreat as an idyllic vacation resort.
The Winter 2005 edition of the hotel chain's magazine Highstyle included an article entitled "Berchtesgaden: It's not just a peak, it's a treat," in which the resort was advertised as, among other things, a "cozy spot for a display of thigh-slapping local dancing" and "a particularly fine spot for yodeling."
InterContinental Hotels intends to open its new Berchtesgaden Resort hotel in March of 2005, according to its website.
Hitler built his retreat and southern headquarters near the town of Berchtesgaden in the scenic Bavarian Alps. The complex included a large home for the Nazi leader, a mountaintop conference center and a bunker.
"Unfortunately, Berchtesgaden holds a rather more sinister significance," said Wiesenthal Center director for international liaison Dr. Shimon Samuels, in a letter to InterContinental Hotels Group chairman David Webster.
"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."
Based in Los Angeles, the Simon Wiesenthal Center aims to preserve the memory of the Holocaust and fight intolerance through educational outreach and social action.
"A decade ago," continued Samuels, "I visited Berchtesgaden with BBC television and engaged in a debate with the German Institute for Contemporary History in Munich on how best to prevent the banalization committed by your magazine and, thereby, ensure that every visitor includes in his itinerary the Berchtesgaden Documentation Center and the memorial to the victims of Nazism."
Samuels noted the irony of the timing of the article, which coincided with commemorations of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the other extermination camps.
Citing a section in the article urging visitors to "descend into the bowels of the earth" in a tour of the nearby Salzbergwerk salt mines, Samuels said the death camps were "a place in which millions, indeed, descended `into the bowels of the earth', never to return."
Samuels took the hotel chain to task for publicizing the hotel as "the ideal spot for a bit of relaxation" while ignoring the site's wartime role.
"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," he wrote.
But today anti-Semitism is all the rage. Everything has been forgotten. Nothing remembered. Those who forget history are invited to repeat it. To slap your thighs to it. To dance to it. You can even yodel to it.
Nothing has really changed in over half a century. Relive it. Indulge in it. Treat yourself to the Hitler Hotel. The summit of insensitivity. The peak of anti-Semitism.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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