Concentration camp ad causes furore

Jewish organisations have denounced an Estonian newspaper for publishing a mock ad for weight-loss pills depicting emaciated prisoners at a Nazi concentration camp.

Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem called the mock ad in the Eesti Ekspress weekly a “perverted attempt at humour at the expense of the Nazis’ millions of victims”.

Alla Jakobson, spokeswoman for Estonia’s Jewish community, said in newspaper Postimees that the incident shows Estonian society is experiencing “major problems with moral and ethical values”.

Sulev Vedler, deputy editor of Eesti Ekspress, said the mock ad, which ran in the paper’s humour section, was poking fun at an Estonian gas company that recently used an image of Auschwitz to promote its services.

Mr Vedler said the ad “was not targeted against Jewish people”.