March 22



GERMANY:
Museum to Be Closed Over Wax Hitler Figure
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A waxworks museum in Berlin that featured a life-size figure of Nazi
dictator Adolf Hitler has proved to be so controversial it is to be shut
down.

In a reminder of how sensitive an issue Germany's Nazi past remains almost
60 years after the end of World War II, the German bank which owns the
building housing the "Galerie Art'el" and its effigy of Hitler has asked
the museum to leave.

"I had to get rid of Hitler," said museum director Inna Vollstaedt on
Friday. "My landlords have canceled my lease and told me to close from
today. I'm very disappointed."

Vollstaedt said the bank was worried about being associated with the Nazis
and wanted her out as soon as possible.

"They were tired of being continually hassled on the phone. Apparently
people have been out on the streets protesting about the figure in
Israel," said the Russian-born Vollstaedt.

The Wuerttembergische Hypothekenbank, who Vollstaedt said owns the real
estate firm that the building belongs to, was not immediately available
for comment.

The wax Hitler shared a room with his wartime adversaries the Soviet
Union's Joseph Stalin, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British
Prime Minister Winston Churchill overlooking Checkpoint Charlie, the
former Cold War border crossing between East and West Berlin.

Germany's biggest-selling newspaper Bild described the waxworks, which
include figures such as Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Diana,
Princess of Wales, a "macabre show."

"This figure should be banned before Checkpoint Charlie becomes a place of
pilgrimage for neo-Nazis," Bild quoted Lea Rosh, the woman who launched a
campaign for a memorial in Berlin to victims of the Holocaust, as saying.

Vollstaedt, who said she had lost half her relatives in the 900-day Nazi
siege of Leningrad during the war, dismissed suggestions she had been
trying to glorify Hitler and blamed the press for the furor.

"The visitors who came to see him said the press were wrong to get so
worked up about it," she said. "They said they were glad to be able to
show their children this appalling man who started the war and did so many
terrible things."

(source: Reuters)<P><P><P>
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