Berlin tourist attraction to fix Hitler after beheading 07/07/2008 00:00

The new Madame Tussaud's in Berlin is set to keep a Hitler wax model after its head was torn off by a visitor on the opening day

Berlin -- Two days after a man wrenched the wax head off an effigy of Adolf Hitler, operators of a Berlin tourist attraction said on Monday they would repair the waxwork and put it back on display.

A 41-year-old old people's home orderly wrenched the head off the figure on Saturday after he had been talked into it by friends in a bar.
Madame Tussaud's, a British company, defended its decision to persist with the display against widespread criticism from Germans, saying, "Hitler represents a decisive part of Berlin's history which we can't just pretend did not happen."

A German public broadcaster, ARD, said Tussaud's was likely to improve security at the amusement on Unter den Linden boulevard.

But a leader of Germany's main Jewish group said on Monday he saw no pressing need to repair the figure.

While public figures have been careful not to directly support the attack by Frank L, 41, who faces a criminal damage charge, Stephen Kramer, general secretary of the Central Council of Jews, said, "I would not be unhappy if the effigy did not come back."

The self-confessed attacker has told German newspapers he once worked as a policeman in Berlin, but decided that work did not suit his punk-music-influenced lifestyle. He was unemployed for several years before being trained to care for old people in a home.

He said friends in a bar had discussed wrecking the effigy and he had boasted he would do it, leaving him little choice in the matter. He said he spent hours plucking up the courage to carry out the attack. Police have not confirmed if the bar room motive is true.

Many Germans were upset that Hitler was included in a commercial amusement close to the Holocaust Memorial and other memory sites. The real Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker close by in 1945.
DPA