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It is amazing that there are still some businesses – never mind people in their own personal capacity – making really awful jokes about the Holocaust.

A restaurant in Rhode Island, America, has come under fire for making a terrible joke about Anne Frank, using a meme of her to compare the region’s recent heatwave to concentration camp ovens.

The owner of the Atlantic Sports Bar and Restaurant in Tiverton said that he found the meme on the internet and thought it was funny, so he shared it, reported The Daily Beast.

He obviously did so without any consideration of how traumatic it might be for others to recall a moment in history when millions of Jewish people across Europe were murdered, including the famous young diarist.

Here is the meme in question:

Image: Screenshot / Facebook / Atlantic Sports Bar and Restaurant

The eatery, specialising in pizza, seafood, and Italian cuisine, soon deleted the meme, but that didn’t do much to abate the public’s fury:

“Wow a racist pit,” Amy Ann commented on an unrelated Facebook post on the restaurant’s page. “Don’t patronize until they apologize.”

“Atlantic Sports Bar & Restaurant absolutely revolting, you disgusting piece of human filth,” RK Chambers commented. “Take responsibility for that horrific meme you posted[.] that was beyond horrific levels of poor taste.”

Comments flooded in even as the restaurant was accused of deleting negative comments, with names like “cowards” and “anti-Semitic losers” being thrown around.

Image: Facebook / Atlantic Sports Bar and Restaurant

When Jessica Machado, a radio talk show host in New Bedford, Massachusetts, called the restaurant to hear them out, she was told not to call them back as they “were very, very busy and it was very hot there, and that they didn’t have time to deal with my concerns or questions”.

Per WBSM, Facebook user Nicole Beth said she knows the owners of the Atlantic and defended the restaurant by recalling how “kind, tolerant and hard-working” they are; flying Pride flags, including a gender-neutral bathroom, allowing addicts and ex-criminals into their staff, and donating to the community, to name a few good things.

Anne Frank once said, “in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart”.

But still, no matter how fun and well-meaning you may intend to be, a joke about one of the most devastating times in history is not okay.

[sources:dailybeast&wbsm]