According to various press reports the record company BMG-MGM has now given its full backing to the rap duo Kollegah/Farid Bang and the publication of their album Jung, Brutal, Gutaussehend 3 (young, brutal and good looking).

Among other things, the Tagespiegel daily paper quotes a sentence which, like others, has deeply hurt many people: “My body is more defined than those of Auschwitz inmates”. On the other hand, the callous lines seemed so benign to enough people to make the album into a bestseller in Germany in 2017.

In his response Christoph Heubner, Executive Vice President of the International Auschwitz Committee said:

“In the context of the debate surrounding the Echo award for this album which oozes violence, hatred and anti-Semitism, I have seldom heard such a cynical and ignorant sentence as that uttered by the people responsible in the record company. Their cynicism documents pure profit maximization, and it is as unmasking as it is pathetic. It epitomizes the dilemma of our society, in which it seems increasingly possible for young people to fall foul of crude derailments because of a company policy that is devoid of any decency and values, and a publication strategy that is exclusively profit oriented. To link all of this with the claim of defending artistic freedom is nothing but pure hypocrisy. For a company that has developed from the tradition of Bertelsmann, this is absolutely disgraceful.”