NEW YORK/BELGRADE (EJP)---A US-based Jewish group has expressed outrage about a hotel in Belgrade, Serbia, that features a popular Adolf Hitler-themed suite.
In a letter to the hotel’s owner, Dusan Zabunovic, the Anti-Defamation League, an organization fighting anti-Semitism worldwide, demanded he remove the portrait of Hitler and change the theme of the suite before International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27.
“Hitler orchestrated the mass murder of six million Jews, including tens of thousands of Serbian Jews, and others,” said Abraham Foxman, ADL national director and a Holocaust survivor.
The “Mr. President” hotel offers rooms designed around current or past world leaders.
Among them is the 200 dollars-a-night Hitler suite, where a portrait of the uniformed German dictator, with a swastika on his arm, hangs on the wall over the king-sized bed.
The Hitler room, number 501, is the most popular and is occupied mainly by German, Croat and Slovenian guests, Zabunovic, said. He believes that the public “has overreacted.”
Other suites honor President George Bush, his father, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Cuban Leader Fidel Castro, former Russian dictator Joseph Stalin and former Yugoslavian communist dictator Josip Broz.
“Using this tyrannical dictator to promote a hotel is a gross marketing ploy and demonstrates a profound failure to understand the horror of the Holocaust," Abraham Foxman said. He added that reports of high demand for the hotel suite "are deeply disturbing."
Zabunovic said he would not exclude Hitler from his new hotel just as Madame Tussaud's wax museum and other museums would not eliminate him from their exhibits.
“Hitler's victims would turn in their graves if there was no memorial to what a monstrous criminal he was,” he said.
According to the press, in Serbia, despite public outrage, not much can be done to punish the hotel for such a gesture.
While in Europe pictures of the Nazi leader and related symbols are strictly prohibited, no such regulations exist in Serbia.