Death Camp Jigsaw Puzzle

Biggins

I expect this to be VERY soon withdrawn:

ONLINE RETAIL GIANT Amazon has come under fire over the sale of a jigsaw puzzle that recreates the crematorium at the Nazi death camp of Dachau, a media report said Sunday.
“This is a real slap in the face for concentration camp survivors and relatives of victims,” conservative politician Gerda Hasselfeldt wrote in a letter to Amazon that was cited by Der Spiegel.

The 252-piece puzzle, being sold for 19.33€ (around €20), is sold as suitable for children aged eight and over.

http://www.thejournal.ie/amazon-jigsaw-puzzle-dachau-616926-Sep2012/

I would personally consider it poor taste to make the place into a jigsaw for two reasons.
1. To help make a company profits via the deaths of hundreds of thousands and
2. How is making an image of a death camp considered now a good fun time game/puzzle?
Just strange and perhaps very poor taste.
Amazon no doubt will withdraw the item shortly – that I have no doubts about.

The bright spark that came up with this idea might be looking for a new position in the company!
One where he might be able to hide at out of embarrassment?

juan.kerr

Is it made by a german company?

My name is URL

Much ado about nothing

Praetorian Saighdiuir

Jew really wonder what these companies do be thinking!

Biggins

My name is URL wrote: »

Much ado about nothing

To be or not to be?

notnumber

http://www.amazon.com/building-Korsakov-Sakhalin-Robert-Harding/dp/B0080XANLU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1349021609&sr=8-1&keywords=Dacha+puzzle

mmmhh slow news day?

Chuck Stone

Do people still do jigsaws?

Boring shit.

Madam Marie

Surely you're only supposed to use the sad face thread icon if someone has hurt an animal, in much the same way as how the angry face thread icon is reserved for pedo related threads, no?

Zab

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crematorium-concentration-Bavaria-Robert-Harding/dp/B004469WBY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1349022202&sr=8-1

Does seem a bit odd to be honest.

Biggins

notnumber wrote: »

http://www.amazon.com/building-Korsakov-Sakhalin-Robert-Harding/dp/B0080XANLU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1349021609&sr=8-1&keywords=Dacha+puzzle

mmmhh slow news day?

Probably in all honesty but I posted about it here to see others 'take' on it.

Its not even exactly what could be considered a good picture of something interesting or visually appealing (which could be better found elsewhere of course).

Ristiano Conaldo

I did nazi that coming

Zab

Are you guys serious? That dacha and Dachau have no relation to each other.

Looking at the name of the puzzle it's almost as if somebody just went through the Robert Harding database and just clicked off a load of photos to have puzzles automatically generated for them. "Robert Harding puzzle" gives 24000 results in Amazon. I'd say this was just a mistake.

Hande hoche!

Zab wrote: »

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crematorium-concentration-Bavaria-Robert-Harding/dp/B004469WBY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1349022202&sr=8-1

Does seem a bit odd to be honest.

No reviews

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

so is this more or less offensive than a jigsaw of mohammed?

My name is URL

It's a jigsaw ffs, not a recruitment leaflet for the Nazi party. Plenty of jigsaws exist of other bloody and historical scenes. I remember having a puzzle depicting the Battle of Gettysburg as a kid.

up for anything

I'd say the type of person who would enjoy putting this jigsaw together is the type of person who would deny the holocaust ever happened making the jigsaw a bit redundant.

ejmaztec

The most annoying thing is that there's bound to be a piece missing = flashbacks to a depressing childhood.:(

Micky Dolenz

Anything that keeps the memory of these places alive is a good thing in my book.

Yakult

A historical picture that is turned into a jigsaw? Nothing to see here folks.

Biggins

My name is URL wrote: »

It's a jigsaw ffs, not a recruitment leaflet for the Nazi party. Plenty of jigsaws exist of other bloody and historical scenes. I remember having a puzzle depicting the Battle of Gettysburg as a kid.

For discussion purposes ONLY - not to be adversarial, I say the following:

The likes of a Battle of Gettysburg jigsaw might be seen as a part celebratory image as the eventually win and subsequent effect(s) which that battle brought, could be seen as a positive - not just as a complete negative?

(Also maybe partly to do with victors getting to write history - but thats another whole big topic)

Biggins

On a lighter note (Christmas 13/14 weeks away) who would want to give a jigsaw puzzle of three death ovens, away to someone as a gift?

Each to their own I suppose?

IvySlayer

People look to get offended at anything.

Politicians pretending to be offended at something in order win votes piss me off.

Spunge

thats gas

loobylou

Dachau wasn't a death camp.

Biggins

loobylou wrote: »

Dachau wasn't a death camp.

Officially it was a concentration camp.
Sadly for an estimated 77,000 lives that died there, it very much unofficially was a death camp for them.

Zebra3

Biggins wrote: »

On a lighter note (Christmas 13/14 weeks away) who would want to give a jigsaw puzzle of three death ovens, away to someone as a gift?

Each to their own I suppose?

It's an unusual item to sell to say the least, but I remember as a kid "cowboys and Indians" was a popular game with costumes sold for kids to dress up and play a game that turned genocide and ethnic cleansing into a bit of a laugh.

People still give their kids military toys like tanks and fighters and bombers to play with. Is it any different?

Because while the Germans threw humans into ovens, the British and the Americans turned cities into ovens (with their airpower).

Gongoozler

You've the right to sell anything that is yours, that isn't committing a crime by doing so. Can't the people that are so offended just not buy it. Start a campaign if they like too.

Faith in humans minuscule.

Biggins

Zebra3 wrote: »

It's an unusual item to sell to say the least, but I remember as a kid "cowboys and Indians" was a popular game with costumes sold for kids to dress up and play a game that turned genocide and ethnic cleansing into a bit of a laugh.

People still give their kids military toys like tanks and fighters and bombers to play with. Is it any different?

Because while the Germans threw humans into ovens, the British and the Americans turned cities into ovens (with their airpower).

I think (and I'm throwing this out there for consideration) that it seems to be more acceptable that actual battles of warfare are more open to be celebrated due to their being winners and benefits of such wins?

The utter sadness and killing of non-combatants in such large scale is still seen as a sensitive area for not just people by maybe a whole modern country or two.

My name is URL

Biggins wrote: »

I think (and I'm throwing this out there for consideration) that it seems to be more acceptable that actual battles of warfare are more open to be celebrated due to their being winners and benefits of such wins?

The utter sadness and killing of non-combatants in such large scale is still seen as a sensitive area for not just people by maybe a whole modern country or two.

What about this? - http://www.amazon.com/B-29-Enola-Gay-scale-model/dp/B0006N1PXM/ref=sr_1_1?s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1349023674&sr=1-1&keywords=Atomic+bomb

That's the plane that was used to murder about 200,000 non-combatants in Japan. No such outrage over that being sold though.

Zebra3

Biggins wrote: »

I think (and I'm throwing this out there for consideration) that it seems to be more acceptable that actual battles of warfare are more open to be celebrated due to their being winners and benefits of such wins?

The utter sadness and killing of non-combatants in such large scale is still seen as a sensitive area for not just people by maybe a whole modern country or two.

I agree with you, hence my point about people giving their kids bombers to play with.

PC CDROM

I prefer this. Like if you are going to cause controversy...

http://blog.balder.org/?p=880

Copy/Model of Auschwitz main gate allegedly made of gold teeth from Jews

Biggins

My name is URL wrote: »

What about this? - http://www.amazon.com/B-29-Enola-Gay-scale-model/dp/B0006N1PXM/ref=sr_1_1?s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1349023674&sr=1-1&keywords=Atomic+bomb

That's the plane that was used to murder about 200,000 non-combatants in Japan. No such outrage over that being sold though.

All true.

We can only put it down to those people/countries involved and their particular sensitive feelings on the matter.

Some clearly are of a different outlook.

Myself although I would not rush out to buy such a jigsaw, I wouldn't start taking a position that just because some would hate them, they should be destroyed.
That was the route Hitler eventually took with the burning of books.

My name is URL

PC CDROM wrote: »

I prefer this. Like if you are going to cause controversy...

http://blog.balder.org/?p=880

Copy/Model of Auschwitz main gate allegedly made of gold teeth from Jews

Now that's macabre!

Grayson

My name is URL wrote: »

Now that's macabre!

This was weird.

http://blog.balder.org/billeder-blog/Auschwitz-Lego-Libera-Imitation-260.jpg

Dangerous Man

Grayson wrote: »

This was weird.

http://blog.balder.org/billeder-blog/Auschwitz-Lego-Libera-Imitation-260.jpg

That's Christmas sorted.

Grayson

Zab wrote: »

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crematorium-concentration-Bavaria-Robert-Harding/dp/B004469WBY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1349022202&sr=8-1

Does seem a bit odd to be honest.

Lots of brick coloured pieces. But the corners should be easy to find.


As a side note, I remember hearing that the crematoria were never used there. Or maybe it was just the gas chambers. I was there as a teenager, but that was over 20 years ago.

ScumLord

Jigsaw puzzle addicts don't even care what the picture is, all they see is jigsaw peices.

B.A._Baracus

My name is URL wrote: »

It's a jigsaw ffs, not a recruitment leaflet for the Nazi party. Plenty of jigsaws exist of other bloody and historical scenes. I remember having a puzzle depicting the Battle of Gettysburg as a kid.

You make a good point about other jigsaw pictures.
But the death camps of world war 2 were the largest mass murder in human history. Its in very bad taste for the picture to be that of the crematorium. Many people had a horrific death then just tossed inside to be burned to ashes.

I guess it would be like having a jigsaw of the twin towers. But instead of a nice normal picture of them remembering 911. The completed image shows a plane about to hit it.... its all about taste :P

Zebra3

B.A._Baracus wrote: »

But the death camps of world war 2 were the largest mass murder in human history.

That's highly disputable.

Biggins

Zebra3 wrote: »

That's highly disputable.

Indeed.
Stalin has alone reported killed through the use of his once gulags in Siberia.
The numbers he killed in those alone was 1.7 million.
The total deaths cause by Stalin is numbered now at least 6 million combined, through his very own orders and personal instigated methods.
It wasn't till Nikita Khrushchev made a brave speech in his home country that his predecessor was exposed.
February 25th 1956, he made whats considered one of the bravest speeches (4 hours long) in the world of politics telling the world of what had happened and how so.

Zebra3

Mao Zedong's "Great Leap Forward".

Somewhere between 20,000,000-43,000,000 murdered.

The holocaust of the natives of the Americas by Europeans is estimated to be around 100,000,000.

Why would amazon be in trouble about it? They're not the ones making it

Zebra3

bluewolf wrote: »

Why would amazon be in trouble about it? They're not the ones making it

Pressure groups target the big brand to publicise their own cause.

Sarky

I would buy one. It's an interesting scene. Morbid, perhaps, but interesting nonetheless.

Executive Steve

Zebra3 wrote: »

That's highly disputable.

Stalin would have given them a run for their money, and Pol Pot and Mao were bad too of course, but I think despite the numbers not quite reaching their heights that Hitler's crime still comes across as the most chilling.

The amount of ingenuity, innovation and planning; the labour and expense that were poured into it, the amount of unremarkable bureaucrats and civil servants slaving away in untold offices, the extra railways, the computerisation of it all using IBM analytical machines, the sheer single minded focus on thorough extermination while trying to shield what was a massive state undertaking from the public in as far as was deemed practical - it still floors me.


Stalin was no saint (obviously!) and he would probably have comfortably beaten Hitler on points even without the massive famines in the Ukraine and the grain shortages and the many millions of dead that resulted from the inefficiencies of a centrally planned economy in the pre-networked era; I think that the tendency in history in recent years has been to paint those famines as genocidal acts that bump up a score built over the course of a career that lasted decades as opposed to the side effects of incredibly misguided blunders wrought by an uncaring system and magnified by a lack of negative feedback travelling back up the chain of command; the holocaust was more of a single calculated project which makes it all the more inhuman and evil.


(assuming your "highly disputable" here refers to the relative magnitudes of 20th century genocide rather than a reluctance to believe it all took place to begin with, that is.)

Zab

The puzzle is now gone. I really do think this was just a mistake by the company due to the sheer number of pictures the were processing.

CruelCoin

Biggins wrote: »

2. How is making an image of a death camp considered now a good fun time game/puzzle?

The average person to consider jigsaws "fun times" are also the kind of people who are fascinated by history......

I'd be curious too.

Zab

CruelCoin wrote: »

The average person to consider jigsaws "fun times" are also the kind of people who are fascinated by history......

I'd be curious too.

You'd be curious about what it's like to do a jigsaw of Dachau?

Biggins

CruelCoin wrote: »

The average person to consider jigsaws "fun times" are also the kind of people who are fascinated by history......

I'd be curious too.

Google a picture and save a few quid!

CruelCoin

Zab wrote: »

You'd be curious about what it's like to do a jigsaw of Dachau?

Why not?

To ignore the history surrounding the camp and "lets pretend it never happened" is to my mind more insulting than the image itself.

In order to improve on the past, you must first know what happened in the past. Plastering over it helps nobody bar the terminally oversensitive

Zab

CruelCoin wrote: »

Why not?

To ignore the history surrounding the camp and "lets pretend it never happened" is to my mind more insulting than the image itself.e

Ignore the history? Pretend it didn't happen? Who said anything about doing any of that?

This conversation is silly. The jigsaw was decidedly odd. Now it's gone.