A university in Thailand has apologizes for displaying a billboard that showed Adolf Hitler alongside Superman and other superheroes, according to the New York Daily News. The university said on Monday that the banner was painted by ignorant students who didn't realize that the image of Hitler would offend anyone.
The billboard was located outside the art faculty of Chulalongkorn University as part of a tribute to this year's graduating class. The billboard read "Congratulations" in bold white letters, showing Hitler with his arm raised in a Nazi salute next to Batman, Captain America, the Incredible Hulk and Iron Man.
"[We] would like to formally express our sincere apology for our students' 'Superhero' mural," Suppakorn Disatapundhu, the art school dean, said in a statement on Monday. "I can assure you we are taking this matter very seriously."
The billboard remained in place for two days before it was removed on Saturday after receiving criticism. Photographs were posted online showing graduating students in their robes, mimicking Hitler's raised arm salute.
Freshman art students painted the banner as part of a traditional send-off from incoming students to the graduating class. It was one of dozens of banners and billboards that were around the campus during the university's commencement period, according to Disatapundhu.
The idea behind the billboard was to show that both good and bad people co-exist in the world, Disatapundku said after speaking with the students who painted it.
"They told me the concept was to paint a picture of superheroes who protect the world," Disatapundhu said in a telephone interview with the Daily News. "Hitler was supposed to serve as a conceptual paradox to the superheroes.
He pointed out that Hitler was painted in grey scale while the superheroes were portrayed in vivid colors.
"This kind of thoughtless display will not happen again," he said.
"Hitler as a superhero?" Rabbi Abraham Cooper, an associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an International Jewish human rights group, asked in criticism of the banner prior to its removal. "Is he an appropriate role model for Thailand's younger generation - a genocide hate monger who mass murdered Jews and Gypsies and who considered people of color as racially inferior?
"The Simon Wiesenthal Center is outraged and disgusted by this public display at Thailand's leading school of higher education," he continued.
The Thailand school system mainly teaches the history of Thailand and its line of kings. World history is only glossed over, with little or no mention of the holocaust, resulting in graduating students that remain ignorant to world affairs.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
