Having lived through 12 years of Adolf Hitler’s “1,000-year” Third Reich in Nazi Germany, I couldn’t believe my eyes upon opening the pages of the Sun Journal of Feb. 16.

The reproduction of an advertisement that appeared in the Portland Press-Herald featuring a picture of a bearded person reminiscent of a stereotypical images depicted in past and present anti-Semitic publications produced an immediate flashback in my mind to obscene images of Nazi propaganda posters, and cartoons, published in Julius Streicher’s anti-Semitic and semi-pornographic magazine “Der Stuermer.”

But one doesn’t have to go back that far in history. Smear propaganda and anti-Semitic images are produced in the Middle East and elsewhere by Islamist jihadists and terrorists, as well as by the Islamic Republic of Iran under their President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who constantly proclaims his genocidal intent to “wipe Israel off the face of the earth” and destroy the “great Satan” – the United States of America.

The publication of this advertisement suggestive of anti-Semitism shows once again the amazing ignorance about the well-documented history of genocidal anti-Semitism during, and before, the Holocaust.

The appearance of this tasteless ad on two occasions in respected Maine newspapers – the other was the Saco-Biddeford-Old Orchard Beach Courier – points to the urgent need of serious history lessons for some of our media and business elites who – of all people – should be educated enough to know about such things.

Klaus D. Kuck, Lewiston