MUMBAI, INDIA, August 24, 2006: Puneet Sabhlok, 23 years old and a novice restaurateur, says he wanted a catchy cafe name to sell his $3 to $4 plates of crostini tonno, pear and ricotta salad and pannacotta. So he went with “Hitler’s Cross.” He put a swastika in the logo. “Hitler is a catchy name. Everyone knows Hitler,” he explained in an interview. The cafe opened this week in a remote suburb of Mumbai. At first, business was brisk. But as word spread, revulsion followed. Before long, India’s Jews, joined by diplomats from Israel and Germany and the Anti-Defamation League in New York, were working to shut the place down. Abraham Foxman, the U.S. Anti-Defamation League’s national director, issued a statement saying the restaurant “denigrates the memory of the victims and does a dangerous disservice to the Mumbai community by downplaying the horrors of the Holocaust.” On Thursday, after meeting with a Jewish community leader here, Sabhlok agreed to re-christen the restaurant. “I never wanted to promote Hitler,” Sabhlok said. “I just wanted to promote my restaurant.” The episode was treated in the local media as a cheap publicity stunt.
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