Turkish Men's Shampoo Commercial Featuring Adolf Hitler Sparks International Outrage (Video)

Using a video of Adolf Hitler giving a speech would not seem to be a smart marketing idea for any product. Biomen is learning that the hard way.

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The Turkish cosmetics company has released a commercial for a men's shampoo featuring vintage footage of the German dictator making an empassioned speech. It is dubbed with a Turkish voiceover that says: "If you're not wearing women's clothes, you shouldn't be using women's shampoo either. Here it is. A real man's shampoo. Biomen. Real men use Biomen."

According to the Jeruselum Post, leaders of Turkey’s Jewish community have called for the ad to be pulled, releasing a statement on Istanbul’s rabbinate’s website that reads: “Using Hitler, whose brutal ideology caused the deaths of millions of people, in a commercial in order to be different or create awareness (of a product) is unacceptable."

The New York-based Anti-Defamation League has  it was "repulsed" by the use of Hitler's image to sell shampoo.

"The use of images of the violently anti-Semitic dictator who was responsible for the mass murder of 6 million Jews and millions of others in the Holocaust to sell shampoo is a disgusting and deplorable marketing ploy," said Abraham H. Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League's national director and a Holocaust survivor, on the group's website. He added: "It is an insult to the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust, those who survived, and those who fought to defeat the Nazis."

About 20,000 Jews live in Turkey, mainly in Istanbul, a city of around 14 million Muslims. Jewish leaders have been expressing concern about increasing anti-Semitism in Turkey in recent years.

Tell us in the comments: What do you think about this Turkish shampoo ad?