Nazi flag shock

Published on 13/10/2012 00:00

Words cannot express my shock and anger at the crass public PR stunt by staff from the Alhambra Theatre involving Nazi flags (your report, 12 October).

Mr Fletcher, when challenged, does not face up to the idiotic insensitivity of his actions, but seeks to justify himself and blusters about Fife Council being 
unable to take a joke. He misses the point that it was Fife Constabulary that very rightly locked him up, along with his four stooges.

Mr Fletcher then makes the staggering revelation that it was his intention “to use the image in the theatre’s adult panto night, to poke fun at the council”. I cannot understand what kind of pantomime would make lighthearted use of swastikas. The very idea is distasteful on so many levels. Art should be thought-provoking, not downright offensive or disrespectful to the millions of people who suffered as a result of Nazism.

I speak of the millions killed by the dictatorship under that symbol, the millions killed in battlefields across Europe and Africa, the six million Jews murdered in concentration camps. I speak of the tens of thousands of British civilians who died in air raids and the countless others who suffered and died because of Adolf Hitler.

I am a German national, very happily domiciled in Fife with my Scottish wife and children. My grandfather was imprisoned as an enemy of the state and was not able to ever speak about what he had experienced in Dachau concentration camp. I seriously doubt that he or anybody that has experienced similar would see any “fun” side to this undertaking.

Mr Fletcher also seeks to justify himself by claiming this stunt is self-defence against a “bullying” council, which he compares to Hitler’s regime. I believe the correct English phrase to describe this defence is “grossly disproportionate”.

When Prince Harry was photographed wearing a Nazi uniform the whole world was outraged, but a local businessman seems to think it is okay for him, and even “fun”.

I call on Bill Fletcher to make a full, unreserved, public apology and to promise never to repeat this behaviour. His actions bring shame on the decent, honourable nation that I am proud to call my home.

Klaus Berchtebreiter

Kirkcaldy

Fife