‘No Holocaust flyers’, shop tells Adelaide survivor
A HOLOCAUST survivor staging an Adelaide exhibition on the Shoah was appalled when told that a flyer for the event could not be posted outside a local store because a regular customer "does not believe in the Holocaust".
A HOLOCAUST survivor staging an Adelaide exhibition on the Shoah was appalled when told that a flyer for the event could not be posted outside a local store because a regular customer “does not believe in the Holocaust”.
Adelaide sculptor Andrew Steiner, 77, who survived the war in Budapest, losing 13 members of his family, told The AJN he was shocked when a staff member informed him the A3-sized poster, affixed to a pillar outside the shop, had to come down.
When The AJN contacted Digital Concepts at Norwood Place, an Adelaide shopping centre, the shop assistant who had spoken to Steiner said: “The flyer had ‘Holocaust” written on it, and we’ve got a customer that comes in here who doesn‚’t believe in the Holocaust, so if we have stuff up there like that, then we have to get into arguments with people, and we can’t be bothered.”
The store manager later phoned The AJN and confirmed that notorious Holocaust denier Fredrick Toben was a regular customer.
However, he insisted the content of the flyer was not the reason it was removed. He said that posting notices in common areas outside the shop violated his lease. A spokesperson for Norwood Place confirmed that was the centre’s policy.
Steiner said he had posted about 40 flyers in libraries, civic centres and shopping centres around Adelaide, and had not had any objections
elsewhere.
Anti-Defamation Commission executive director Deborah Stone expressed her dismay at the shop assistant’s reaction. “The Holocaust is not a matter of belief,” she said. “It is a fact of history.¬† Exhibitions like this one are an important part of educating people to understand what happened and protecting human rights in the future.
“Fredrick Toben’s offensive behaviour in denying the Holocaust has been condemned by Australian courts. No retailer should be pandering to that.”
The exhibition, titled Remember the Holocaust: Art and the Holocaust, was devised, financed and curated by Steiner who has been preparing it for 18 months. It is running at Adelaide’s Migration Museum until August 30.
PETER KOHN
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