Batman, Captain America, Iron Man, Adolf Hitler? A top university in Thailand issued an apology after displaying a banner with Adolf Hitler surrounded by superheroes as part of a tribute to this year's graduating class. ?
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A Thailand University issues an apology after first year students paint a mural displaying Adolf Hitler in a Nazi salute among superheroes. (photo: Reuters)
The Hitler mural said "Congratulations" in bold white letters, featuring Hitler with his arm raised in the Nazi salute. The Hitler billboard was up for two days prior to being removed Saturday after the university received backlash for the ignorant image. ABC News reports that online photos revealed graduate students in their robes imitating Hitler's Nazi salute.
"[We] would like to formally express our sincere apology for our students' 'Superhero' mural," art school dean Suppakorn Disatapundhu said in a statement issued Monday, Yahoo News reports. "I can assure you we are taking this matter very seriously."
Disatapundhu said that freshman art students painted the mural outside the art faculty of Chulalongkorn University as part of a customary farewell from incoming students to the graduating class. The Hitler banner was one of dozens across campus.
"They told me the concept was to paint a picture of superheroes who protect the world," Disatapundhu said in a telephone interview. "Hitler was supposed to serve as a conceptual paradox to the superheroes," he said. "This kind of thoughtless display will not happen again."
Associate Professor Disatapundhu noted that while the superheroes were painted in bright colors, Hitler's image was in grey scale. Still, imitations as well as criticism together point to the offensive effect of the Thailand Hitler banner.
An international Jewish human rights group, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, commented on the offensive Hitler banner before its eradication, AP News reports.
"Hitler as a superhero? Is he an appropriate role model for Thailand's younger generation -- a genocidal hate monger who mass murdered Jews and Gypsies and who considered people of color as racially inferior," Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean at the center, said in a statement Friday. "The Simon Wiesenthal Center is outraged and disgusted by this public display at Thailand's leading school of higher education."
AP News also notes that Thai school systems focus primarily on the history of Thailand and often skim over world history. Studies typically give little or no mention to the Holocaust, which could partly explain the obliviousness to the offensiveness of the Hitler banner.
Associate Professor Supakorn said that he talked with the students connected to the Hitler banner and found they had no malevolent intentions, Phuket News reports. However, whether or not the first year students had malicious intent, the Thailand Hitler banner has gained global attention in its offensive nature.
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