Simon Wiesenthal Center Slams German Mag for Its Trump-as-Hitler Cover

In the wake of German newsweekly Stern's release of its Aug. 24 issue with a cover showing President Donald Trump giving a Nazi salute next to the headline "Sein Kampf" ("His Struggle," referencing Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf"), a prominent Los Angeles-based Jewish group is speaking out. As The Jerusalem Post reports, Dean and founder of the Wiesenthal Center Rabbi Marvin Hier and Associate Dean Abraham Cooper stated that while Trump had been mistaken to compare Neo-Nazis and white supremacists with those who oppose them from the left, it is still wrong to compare the leader of the free world to Adolf Hitler. "President Trump is fair game for serious criticism by the public and media at home and abroad," they stated, "but depicting him as a latter-day Hitler in a major German publication is untrue and beyond the pale." Stern has released this statement from its editor, Christian Krug: Unser aktuelles Heftcover hat viele Reaktionen hervorgerufen. Eine Stellungnahme unseres Chefredakteurs @Christian_Krug. pic.twitter.com/BdqyiHNH4Q A translation: The right-wing protesters in Charlottesville raised their arms to the Nazi black, and the American president has not distanced himself from this gesture or from the mindset of the people. On the contrary, Donald Trump had seen in some of them "fine people." With this attitude, he shares with the protesters and greets them in a transcendent sense -- that is exactly what the Stern cover visualizes. It is, of course, far from us to want to minimize the atrocities of the National Socialists. Hamburg-based Stern has been published since 1948 and is owned by Gruner + Jahr, a division of Bertelsmann. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, "an international Jewish human rights organization dedicated to repairing the world one step at a time" per its mission statement, was started in 1977 and is named after Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. Simon Dumenco, aka Media Guy, is an Ad Age editor-at-large. You can follow him on Twitter @simondumenco.

Simon Wiesenthal Center Slams German Mag for Its Trump-as-Hitler Cover

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