The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has criticized as “abhorrent” a beauty contest appearing on a Russian social media site asking members of a pro-Hitler group to vote for their favorite pictures of anti-Semitic women.
In this shocking anti-Semitic beauty pageant contestants must upload a Nazi-themed photo with a caption explaining their love for Hitler. It featured 4 women and girls from Russia and other eastern European countrie.
The contest, which has been dubbed 'Miss Hitler 2014', is encouraging attractive females who love Hitler and hate Jews, to apply for the competition on the social neo-Nazi Russian and Ukrainian media site VKontakte. The online group had more than 7,000 followers before it was taken down this week.
The ‘’Miss Ostland 2014” contest refers to the Reichskommissariat Ostland (RKO), the Nazi civilian occupation regime in the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania that was responsible for the liquidation and extermination of Jews from those regions during the Holocaust. In response to the call for entries, a number of women posted “selfies” of themselves in suggestive poses. One contestant was shown posing with a reproduction German SS military visor.
Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director and a Holocaust survivor, issued the following statement: ‘’It is unfortunately not surprising but still shocking that a group of neo-Nazis in Russia and Ukraine thought up an abhorrent pro-Hitler beauty contest whose rules of entry include being a “woman who hates Jews” and encouraging users to “post a sexy Nazi pic.” ‘’We are gratified that the page was subsequently removed by Vkontake.’’
He stressed that Russia lost millions of people during the war with Germany and suffered more than any other country under the privations imposed by the Nazi regime. ‘It is also a nation where recent polling has found that 30 percent of the adult population harbors anti-Semitic attitudes,’’ he added.
‘’The fact that the contest took place is a reminder of the importance of continuing education about the lessons of the Holocaust and the legacy of anti-Semitism in Russia,’’ Foxman said.