PETA Sparks Outrage with Holocaust Comparison

Nobody ever accused PETA of being timid, but the animal-rights group's latest media campaign has sparked more than the usual antagonism.

In side-by-side photographic images, PETA -- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals -- directly compares farm-animal slaughter to the extermination of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. The display, titled "Holocaust on your Plate," was launched in February on the West Coast, drawing immediate outrage. It consists of eight 60-square-foot panels, each showing photos of factory farms next to photos from Nazi death camps.

An example from the "Holocaust on Your Plate" exhibit: Under the headline "Baby Butchers," PETA shows an image of children behind bars in a concentration camp next to a pen filled with pigs.

Numerous Jewish groups are outraged, including the Anti-Defamation League and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. They say PETA has trivialized the deaths of millions in an effort to generate publicity for its cause.

Individuals, too, are finding fault with the display.

"I was absolutely horrified," said Daniel Zur, a senior at Arizona State University, where PETA's traveling exhibit was displayed this week. Zur, 23, is Jewish and lost 17 family members in the Holocaust.

"Comparing the killing of animals for food to all those millions -- not just Jews, but Gypsies and Christians and others -- making that comparison between the two is humiliating, disgusting and tasteless," Zur said.

Fred S. Zeidman, Holocaust museum chairman, echoed such comments, calling PETA's campaign "utterly shameless and contemptible."

In a letter to PETA President Ingrid Newkirk, Stuart Bender, legal counsel for the Holocaust Memorial Museum, asked PETA to "cease and desist this reprehensible misuse of Holocaust materials." Bender went on to say, "PETA's exploitation of these materials (is) a gross perversion of our mission."

To date, PETA has refused to cease and desist. PETA claims use of the photos is "the very type of speech against exploitation and oppression that (the museum) is supposedly designed to foster and protect."

PETA Touts Jewish Roots to Campaign

PETA has the support of some Jews and at least one religious organization. Its website includes supportive comments from a handful of Jewish members of various organizations, as well as excerpts of writings from animal-friendly Jewish authors.

At press time, PETA even included supportive-sounding words from the Holocaust museum on its "What Others Say" Web page, when that organization stands squarely opposed to the exhibit. PETA touts its campaign as being rooted in the words of award-winning author and Holocaust survivor Isaac Beshevis Singer, who wrote, "To animals, all people are Nazis. For them it is an eternal Treblinka."

But do those words make it acceptable for PETA to put an image of a pile of human bodies in a concentration camp next to a pile of bodies of pigs at a factory farm under the headline, "The Final Indignity?" Or to display a picture of men on wooden bunks at a death camp next to a picture of chickens in cages?

The ADL certainly doesn't think so. That organization calls PETA's requests for support from Jewish groups "outrageous, offensive and taking chutzpah to new heights."

Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the ADL and a Holocaust survivor, issued a statement calling PETA's new campaign "abhorrent."

"Abusive treatment of animals should be opposed, but cannot and must not be compared to the Holocaust," Foxman said. "The uniqueness of human life is the moral underpinning for those who resisted the hatred of Nazis."

PETA seems to welcome such controversy.

A statement on the PETA website offers this comment from Lewis G. Regenstein, who is Jewish and represents the Interfaith Council for the Protection of Animals and Nature in Atlanta, Ga.: