Waxwork Hitler Beheaded in Berlin

A 41-year-old man was arrested on Saturday after beheading a wax figure of Adolf Hitler at Madame Tussauds wax museum in Berlin hours after the exhibition opened, the BBC reported.

Organizers of the exhibition depicted Hitler in his bunker as a defeated figure in the hours before his suicide.

The waxwork was positioned behind a table in order to prevent visitors from posing with the statue or damaging it.

According to police spokesman Bernhard Schodrowski, a security guard had been shoved aside by the attacker.

"He tried to prevent the man from acting but failed," Schodrowski said.

"The suspect, from the Kreuzberg district, pushed the man aside and lunged at the Adolf Hitler figure and ripped the head off."

The decision to include Hitler in the exhibition was a controversial one in a country where Nazi paraphernalia is banned.

However, the organizers stated that they could hardly depict German history without portraying Hitler.

"We did surveys while we were planning the exhibition on the street with Berliners and with tourists, and the result was quite clear that Hitler is one of the figures that they want to see," Natalie Ruoss, an organizer for Madame Tussauds, said.

Despite some criticism in the media, Stephen Kramer, general secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said that as long as it was done properly, he did not object to Hitler being shown.

"Erasing him from history is not going to bring the perished ones back, it's not going to heal the damage that he did, the crimes that he did," Kramer said.

"That would be counter-productive."

The Berlin branch of Madame Tussauds also includes other German historical figures like the politician Otto von Bismarck, political economist and theorist Karl Marx, composer Ludwick van Beethoven, composer Johann Sebastian Bach and philosopher and scientist Albert Einstein.