Historical Ignorance to sell Electronic Games?

The ever lovely Mrs. Polski3 and I often do our walks at a nearby indoor mall when the weather outside is not conducive to being outside. Like most malls in the USA, there is an electronic game shop there, selling modules for a variety of electronic game systems.

Recently, they have displayed a poster for a game called Wolfenstein or something like that. I am guessing it is some sort of armies of the dead game in that the character shown on the poster is a skull with a World War II Axis-side topper (hat). I personally have nothing against people gaming to recreate historical military events or even fantasy encounters; however the hat on this character displays a symbol that is, to many people, one of Nazi horrors and atrocities, the SS Death's Head.

What I wonder is this. Do the mostly young people who will buy and play this game even realize what that symbol represents? Do their parents know? While I am not Jewish, I personally know several Jewish people who would be very offended by such a public display that includes such a symbol. And if I'd had members of my family robbed, taunted, humiliated, arrested, tortured, starved, raped, medically experimented upon, gassed and machine gunned down, I would be offended by it.

So, what is the point of this post? That it is ok to include some "historical" symbol to help sell a game or other product because hardly anyone knows just what that symbol represents ? Please don't tell me about the First Amendment to our US Constitution; I don't think it applies here because of what that symbol represents (or, have our courts said otherwise?). Or is it just that not enough people know or care about what happened "way back then" ?

Anyhow, it is my opinion that if you purchase something like this game, you condone what that symbol represents. And to me, that is all the more reason History must be taught to the young people. Things like what happened in Europe in the early half of the 20th century should never again happen. But there must be an awareness of what happened.....it must be taught.

Thanks for reading this post.