India: Will Showing Exhibits on the Holocaust Curb Popularity of Hitler Among Business Schools ?

The Times of India

Hitler fame in B-schools prompts Holocaust exhibit
Bella Jaisinghani, TNN | Nov 6, 2012, 01.29AM IST

MUMBAI: The Jewish community in the US is alarmed by the slow emergence of Adolf Hitler as a popular role model in Indian business and management schools. The recent incident of a Nagpur pool parlour having devised its theme around the German leader has further caused ripples of anxiety.

To remedy the situation, the Simon Wiesenthal Center of Los Angeles has brought a display of 200 photographs of Holocaust history to Mumbai. 'The Courage to Remember' exhibition will have 40 picture panels of Holocaust history from 1933-1945. The display is on from November 6-10 at St Xavier's College in partnership with the Consulate of Israel.

The annual Holocaust Day commemoration of January 27 is weeks away. However, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center, stresses the urgency of this exhibition. "Some groups like to give the false impression that the Holocaust never happened. We hope that the genocide pictures and documents help Indians understand Hitler's hateful ideology that killed six million Jews based on sheer accident of birth," he says.

"The Jewish community has always had an affinity for India given that the country has never expressed negative sentiments about them. However, we are perplexed to see the popularity of his autobiography, Mein Kampf, and to see commercial establishments being named after Hitler. Indians are told he was a leader who unified Germany. One cannot forget that he killed millions of his own countrymen in doing so," the rabbi adds.

Alarmist reasons aside, 'The Courage to Remember' has travelled to 16 countries and visited New Delhi and Bengaluru already. "We will place a permanent set of photographs with the Israeli consulate in Mumbai so local institutions can display them in future," says Dr Alfred Balitzer, professor emeritus from Claremont McKenna College in LA. The Simon Wiesenthal Center is an NGO that is dedicated to teaching the lessons of the Nazi Holocaust. It runs a Museum of Tolerance that figures among the six must-see museums in the US.