Speaking of bad taste…
The Honky Donky fast food restaurant in Rafaela, Argentina, has withdrawn its “Anne Frank hamburger” and its “Hitlerian fries” after the reaction of the local Jewish community.
The Rafaela Jewish Community condemned the restaurant for the dishes, issuing a statement on its Facebook page in which it underscores the “revulsion and indignation” of the organization.
“Given the public knowledge that a fast food outlet in our city trivially uses the names of Anne Frank and Adolf to name its products, the Rafaela Jewish Community expresses its deepest repudiation and indignation, announcing that we will initiate legal actions corresponding to the fact in question,” they wrote.
It does not end there.
Among the other types of fries that continue to be offered are ‘Benedict’, ‘Genghis’ and ‘Mao’, named after the Italian fascist leader, Mongolian conqueror and Chinese communist dictator respectively.
Mind you, they didn’t even get the spelling of “Genghis” right.
However, the chain will no longer offer Holocaust-themed dishes bearing the names of Anne Frank and the Nazi dictator, and has apologized for the social media marketing campaign.
The “Anne Frank” burger has been renamed after Anne Boleyn, the second wife of England’s King Henry VIII before she was beheaded. The restaurant also said it would soon launch new burgers and fries named after more uplifting figures like Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Dalai Lama.
So inspiring.
Hopefully they get the spelling right. Or that they discard the concept.
The restaurant, which already had a reputation as a refuge for Nazi Germans after World War II, has done the South American country no favours. In fact, after the defeat of Germany in 1945, Argentine President Juan Perón commissioned his intelligence service to provide escape routes for some former Nazi officers, specifically those with scientific and technical knowledge. They included infamous Nazis like Adolf Eichmann and the Angel of Death, Josef Mengele.
