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NewsNovember 13, 2017

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- An Indonesian visual effects museum that encouraged visitors to take selfies with a waxwork of Hitler against a giant image of the Auschwitz extermination camp has removed the exhibit after protests. The De Mata Trick Eye Museum's marketing officer said the statue was removed Friday night after an Associated Press story highlighting outrage from Jewish and rights groups...

By STEPHEN WRIGHT ~ Associated Press
A visitor walks past the wax figure of Adolf Hitler displayed Wednesday against the backdrop of an image of Nazi Death Camp Auschwitz-Birkenau next to Star Wars character Darth Vader, right, at De Mata Museum in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
A visitor walks past the wax figure of Adolf Hitler displayed Wednesday against the backdrop of an image of Nazi Death Camp Auschwitz-Birkenau next to Star Wars character Darth Vader, right, at De Mata Museum in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.Slamet Riyadi ~ Associated Press

JAKARTA, Indonesia -- An Indonesian visual effects museum that encouraged visitors to take selfies with a waxwork of Hitler against a giant image of the Auschwitz extermination camp has removed the exhibit after protests.

The De Mata Trick Eye Museum's marketing officer said the statue was removed Friday night after an Associated Press story highlighting outrage from Jewish and rights groups.

Human Rights Watch had denounced the exhibit as "sickening," and the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, which campaigns against Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism, had demanded its removal.

The museum, which has waxworks of about 80 famous people, had the Hitler figure on display since 2014.

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It initially defended the exhibit as "fun" and said it was one of the most popular waxworks with visitors to the infotainment-style museum in the central Java city of Yogyakarta.

On Sunday, the space at the museum occupied by Hitler was empty, and the image of Auschwitz, where more than 1 million people were exterminated by the Nazi regime, was gone.

It was not the first time Nazism and its symbols have been normalized or idealized in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation and home to a tiny Jewish community.

A Nazi-themed cafe in Bandung where waiters wore SS uniforms caused anger abroad for years until reportedly closing its doors at the beginning of this year.

In 2014, a music video made by Indonesian pop stars as a tribute to presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto stirred outrage with its Nazi overtones.

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