Jewish Groups Decry PETA's Holocaust Ads
By MICHELLE MORGANTE, Associated Press Writer
Friday,  February 28, 2003

SAN DIEGO - An animal-rights campaign comparing the
suffering of livestock to that of Holocaust victims is
drawing sharp criticism from a leading Jewish group
for "trivializing" the mass murder of Jews.

"The Holocaust on Your Plate" campaign by People for
the Ethical Treatment of Animals, debuted this week in
California and will make a national tour.

The display is a set of eight 6-foot-by-10-foot panels
showing photographs of Holocaust victims - emaciated
men, crowds of people being forced onto trains,
children behind barbed wire, heaps of human bodies -
set next to similar images of cattle, pigs and
chickens.

The Anti-Defamation League denounced the project and
PETA's appeal for support from the Jewish community as
"outrageous, offensive and taking chutzpah to new
heights."

Abraham H. Foxman, a Holocaust survivor and ADL
national director, said linking the deliberate,
systematic murder of millions of Jews to the issue of
animal rights was "abhorrent."


PETA member Matt Prescott, the creator of the
campaign, said he is Jewish and his family lost
several members in Nazi concentration camps. He said
the campaign was funded by a Jewish philanthropist who
wishes to remain anonymous.
He said criticism of the project was expected.
"The fact is all animals feel pain, fear and
loneliness," he said Friday. "We're asking people to
recognize that what Jews and others went through in
the Holocaust is what animals go through every day in
factory farms."

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