NEW YORK / BRUSSELS – World Jewish Congress (WJC) President Ronald S. Lauder has welcomed a ruling on Thursday by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) which confirmed a ban imposed by Germany on a series of billboard posters on which the animal rights group PETA juxtaposed images of Jewish Holocaust victims to animals destined for slaughter. “Equating the plight of inmates of Nazi concentration camps with that of animal is profoundly offensive, and these pictures are disgusting and deeply offensive to all decent people, not least to the survivors and their families,” Lauder said.
He added: “No matter how good a cause may be it is simply unacceptable and wrong to put human suffering in the Holocaust on an equal footing with that of animals. The ruling by the ECHR judges represents an important victory not only for the German Jewish community, who brought the initial law suit, but for all Holocaust survivors.” Lauder strongly urged PETA to voluntarily refrain from using Holocaust analogies in its campaigns.
Background
In March 2004, PETA planned to launch an advertising campaign in Germany entitled “The Holocaust on your plate”, which had been carried out in a similar way in the United States. It intended to publish a number of posters each of which bore a photograph of concentration camp inmates along with a picture of animals kept in mass stocks, accompanied by a short text.
For example, the posters showed a photo of piled up human bodies alongside a photograph of a pile of slaughtered pigs under the heading ‘Final Humiliation’ and a photo of rows of inmates lying on bunk beds alongside rows of chicken in laying batteries under the heading “If animals are concerned, everybody becomes a Nazi”. At the time, the leadership of the Central Jewish Council in Germany had filed a request to be granted a court injunction ordering PETA to refrain from publishing seven specific posters.