Hitler Look-Alike in AIDS Video, Defended by German PR Company

[The Straight Story]

Hitler Look-Alike in AIDS Video, Defended by German PR Company
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By Brian Parkin

Sept. 7 (Bloomberg) -- An AIDS awareness video that features a look-alike of Adolf Hitler was defended by its makers after critics said creating an analogy between the Nazi leader and the disease may cause distress to AIDS victims.

Hamburg-based public relations company das comitee sought a shock effect in making the video as awareness of the risks of the disease ebbs, said Hans Weishaeupl, the company’s art director. The 45-second clip shows a shadowy sex scene that rolls to a close depicting a grinning Hitler.

“The criticism’s unfair,” said Weishaeupl by phone from Hamburg today. “We’re not saying aids victims are mass murders but that the disease is.”

The U.K.’s National AIDS Trust said the clip stigmatizes victims, according to a Sept. 4 report on the Daily Telegraph newspaper’s Web site.

Weishaeupl said his company worked for free on the video, co-operating with German AIDS group Regenbogen e.V. to raise awareness of the disease ahead of World AIDS Day on Dec. 1. The campaign also plans to run posters of Saddam Hussein and former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin to draw the analogy between mass murder and aids.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=aAFdA6Zlt49M

[provis99]

1. I don't get the connection the way they intend

Are they saying having sex makes you a Nazi killer?