Estonian Gas Company Uses Auschwitz Image
An Estonian gas company used a photo of Auschwitz to advertise their products.
The website of the Estonian company GasTerm Eesti on Aug. 23 published a photograph of the front gate of the Nazi camp Auschwitz with the famous inscription “Arbeit macht frei,” or work makes you free. The caption of the photo read: “Gas heating – flexible, convenient, and effective.”
The next day the photo was removed from the company’s website and an apology was posted there.
Company director Sven Linros said, according to DzD.ee portal, “Hitler killed himself because he got a gas bill … a lot of people laugh at this, but I do not. I visited Auschwitz with dread. I feel sorry for the victims and their families. The picture was intended for a narrow group of people. We wanted to clarify that the CH4 gas is not toxic and can be used to heat buildings even those with such a sad history.”
This is not the first case of Auschwitz pictures being used in advertisements. In January, a gym in Dubai used an image from Auschwitz with the tag line “Kiss your calories goodbye.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
