Greek comic under fire for swastika-Star of David ad

ATHENS, Greece (JTA) — Greece’s Jewish community has complained to authorities in Athens after a controversial entertainer used a symbol of an intertwined swastika and a Star of David to promote his night club shows.

“The design depicted on the poster fiercely insults our very religion, as well as the memory of the six million Jews, victims of the Holocaust,” said a statement from the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece, addressed to the country’s Minister of Justice and officials in the education ministry.

The poster advertising the show by singer and comedian Tsimis Panousis, for a series of shows at a club in the port city of Piraeus near
Athens, shows a Magen David intertwined with a swastika.

The poster has been plastered widely across Athens and on major boulevards in the city. Panousis, who has a reputation for being provocative, was apparently trying to imply that Greece’s financial crisis was a result of the combined efforts of a German-led austerity plan and Jewish-controlled financial interests.

The Jewish central board’s statement said the board had appealed to various municipalities to remove the offending posters and that they had received positive responses. However, the posters remained up in many places in the city.

There has been an upsurge in anti-Semitic incidents in Greece recently, but most have been tied to the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn Party.