A suggestion that children dress up as the character from the novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, set in a concentration camp during the Holocaust, has been slammed as offensive, ignorant, tasteless and hurtful.
The suggestion was made in a blog post list of 23 easy Book Week costumes inspired by favourite books, which appeared on the website Children’s Book Daily.
Dvir Abramovich, the chairman of the Anti Defamation League, which fights anti-Semitism, said it was an “offensive and ill-judged suggestion”.
It was a wake-up call that served as a reminder that Australia urgently needed mandatory education about the Holocaust, he said.
“Did they pause to think about how deeply inappropriate and bizarre it would be for school children to show up at a party dressed in this way?” he asked in a statement.
The author of the blog post, Bron Maxabella, who writes as Maxabella Loves, suggested: “One for older primary kids to honour, all you need are a pair of striped pyjamas.”
Read the full article by Julie Power at the Sydney Morning Herald.