ART : The Holocaust in Wax: Turning Horror to Profit

Let’s talk tacky.

We’re talking very tacky.

A remake of “Dark Victory” with an AIDS patient in the Bette Davis role might be close, but not really. Ready? The Santa Ana businessman who founded Movieland Wax Museum wants to open a new wax attraction that includes a miniature Nazi concentration camp, complete with moan-filled sound track.

Told you.

He’s also throwing in a depiction of Hitler’s suicide, the Nuremberg War Crimes trials, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. The relationship there may be unclear, but still. . . . And you’ll be able to see it all for only $5.

His name is Allen Parkinson, and he has already sent Orange County business people a letter offering a “share in the profits” of what he calls the War & Peace Wax Museum, which he hopes to open in Santa Ana in June. It would focus on World War II themes, the Mexican revolution, American history and the life of Christ.

The 65-year-old businessman says he has 250 figures newly carved in wax ready for display. He already has a track record in wax: He opened Movieland in Buena Park in 1962, filled it with surrogate figures of big stars and sold the place for millions in 1970. Since then, he says, he has lost money making computer equipment.

But now, he says, he’s tapping a gold mine. “There’ll be a a small concentration camp all in wax figures, very realistic . . . about 21 figures. They’ll be standing there very apathetic, like in those photographs you see. I’ll have Rommel, Hitler, Goering, Hess, Kaltenbrunner, Goebbels. We’ll even have Mrs. Goebbels.” Parkinson professes do-good motives.

“I was in Germany 10 years ago and saw the concentration camps and that got me thinking on the way back on the plane about a concentration camp wax museum. I was thinking that this was an aberration in society, a horror and that a lot of people do not even know about it.”

Then comes the clincher.

“I think it’s going to be a terrific investment.”

He estimates the museum’s cost at $2 million and, in his letter, says: “We expect to pay dividends of 25% to 30% after the first year.” Doesn’t he think that the notion of profiting from the Holocaust with public entertainment might offend a few people?

“I think that some Jewish people might be offended but not many,” says Parkinson, a Utah-born Mormon. “It’s being done low-key. I’m not going to make reference to Jews anywhere in the concentration camp part of it. I’m just going to say that there were 6 million ‘minorities’ who were killed.

“Jews don’t go to wax museums much,” he added. “They’re too sophisticated. Mexicans love wax museums! They’re raised in the Catholic Church and everything in the Catholic Church is figures, the Virgin (Mary) and Christ and all that. . . .”

He described scenes he would offer to draw in Latin crowds. He will show Emperor Maximilian and Carlota, who ruled Mexico from 1864 to 1867 on behalf of Emperor Napoleon III of France. Maximilian was captured and executed by Mexican nationalist forces in 1867. Carlota, having returned to Europe, died in Vienna. “I’m going to have scenes showing the whole story. I’ll have the throne room and soldiers fighting and then there will be Maximilian and two generals facing the firing squad and then a coffin in the room.”

Then visitors will see several scenes depicting Christ’s Crucifixion and Resurrection. “It’s never been done in a wax museum before,” he claimed.

As a sort of buffer between the Nazi section and the Crucifixion, Parkinson plans a scene showing the signing of the Bill of Rights and said he will “give everybody a free reproduction (of the document).”

Who can quibble with such entrepreneurial zeal?

Haim Asa, rabbi of Temple Beth Tikvah in Fullerton, has a few problems with Parkinson’s project.

“There are hundreds of Holocaust museums around the world, but I don’t think there is a charge to go to any of them,” Asa said. “You cannot profit from murder. I am not saying that Mr. Parkinson is guilty of murder but only that there should be no question about his making a buck from the misery of others.”

Asa and Frank Stern, rabbi of Temple Beth Shalom in Santa Ana, said Parkinson’s idea of not identifying Jews as the Nazi’s victims would prompt outrage in the Jewish community.

Both noted recent attempts by revisionist historians to pretend that the concentration camps did not exist, or that Jews were not their main victims. And both men suggested that Parkinson seek some input from members of Orange County’s Jewish community. A similar proposal came from Barbara Brown, the mayor of Fountain Valley, long active in Mexican-American cultural affairs.

“It sounds like an exploitation of a Mexican stereotype, a stereotype of what Mexicans will pay to see so he can make money,” said Brown, who is of Mexican heritage. “That offends me.”

Parkinson insists he doesn’t mean to offend anyone; yet even as he says that, he seems naive. He said he wants to inaugurate his museum with elaborate opening ceremonies. To celebrate the Latin part, he would invite members of the local Latin community and maybe even some government officials from Mexico.

The opening event for the Nazi section has him stumped. “Who would I invite?” he asked. “Do you think officials from the German consulate would want to come?”

There might have been a tinge of sarcasm in his tone, but you couldn’t bet on it.