ADL outraged by Auschwitz photo in ad
NEW YORK, Jan. 6 (UPI) -- The Anti-Defamation League says it is outraged by the use of a Nazi concentration camp photo in an ad campaign for a fitness center in Dubai.
The New York-based human rights group said Phil Parkinson, the founder of The Circuit Factory gym in Dubai, has apologized and removed the image of a railroad leading to Auschwitz-Birkenau with the slogan, "Kiss your calories goodbye." The photo was one of 10 images Parkinson had posted on Facebook as part of an ad campaign.
ADL's national director, Abraham Foxman, a Holocaust survivor, said the apology is "welcome and appropriate."
"However, we are increasingly troubled by both the ignorance and mindset of a generation that appears to be so distant from a basic understanding of the Holocaust that it seems acceptable to use this horrific tragedy as a gimmick to bring attention to promoting losing weight," Foxman said Friday in a release.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2012/01/06/ADL-outraged-by-Auschwitz-photo-in-ad/UPI-97921325875007/?spt=hs&or=tn
= new reply since forum marked as read
Is is supposed to be like if you go to this gym you will get skinny like at Auschwitz?
That's fricken weird....
Original ad:
Marketing in Arab counties follow the same rules (and do try to avoid the same pitfalls) as marketing in Western countries... 
Dubai is an international city with a great many non-Arab residents. Someone named Phil Parkinson could be an Arab, , but the name, picture, voice and English accent strongly suggest otherwise.
After seeing your post, I was not able to confirm his ethnicity. Here's a picture:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PU9DO-ndeEw/TisZs6ewCRI/AAAAAAAAAO8/TddhCGkUZrw/s400/Phil+Pic.jpg
The photo accompanies an interview
http://barefootindubai.blogspot.com/2011/07/local-experts-founder-of-circuit.html
In which we learn:
FiD: What fitness/sporting achievement are you most proud of?
PP: I'm very proud of The Circuit Factory (www.circuitfactory.ae). This is a group exercise class that I devised and I’m now growing. It's only been going 9 weeks, but some of the feedback and results we've been able to achieve have been out of this world. We already run a second location for General Electric and are looking at a third now. A girl called Lina Sami works for me and recently entered the UAE Fitness Challenge (I believe you’re familiar with this) and came first by doing no training other than a daily dose at The Circuit Factory. This gave me a major confidence boost to show me that we’re doing something very special with it.
The interview is from July 2011, so it's a new gym (using an established fitness model, "circuit training"
.
If you go to the circuitfactory.ae site, you can see his page which again sounds like that of an English expatriate. He's one of several trainers.
So this story is vastly exaggerated.
Here's the real scoop: Some guy, (almost certainly a British) expatriate in Dubai, a gym trainer and (based on his interview) shallow dick, made one of those fake "motivational poster" graphics (probably using an automated service) with an incredibly tasteless joke about Auschwitz and posted it on his Facebook page, calling it an "ad campaign."
While disgusting and wrong, this is no more significant than if any dick posted any tasteless graphic on any user-run Website, for example an Internet board like this one. I've been hearing -- and being appalled by -- jokes in the same vein since I was in grade school.
Ever on the prowl for weekly controversy, ADL turns this into an international issue, perhaps because the gym is conveniently in DUBAI (Arabs!!!) and voila: Press stories and appalled thread like this one spread the gym trainer dick's disgusting joke out to tens of millions of people.
There is no basis for blaming "Arab culture" for any of that!
Talk about tasteless! 