Happy birthday, Adolf Hitler! Boy with nazi leader's name denied ShopRite cake
Tuesday, December 16th 2008, 4:54 PM
This Hitler youth is blond-haired, blue-eyed and just turned three.
Adolf Hitler Campbell is the middle child of three kids given Nazi-themed names by their parents, including a dad who denies the Holocaust occurred and decorates his home with swastikas.
"They're just names, you know," father Heath Campbell told the Easton Express-Times. "Yeah, they (the Nazis) were bad people back then. But my kids are little. They're not going to grow up like that."
Adolf has two sisters, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie. The latter, just eight months old, was named for Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler.
The bizarre names came to public attention after a local ShopRite declined to provide the Holland Township, N.J., family with a cake inscribed "Happy Birthday Adolf Hitler."
"Other kids get their cake," Campbell complained. "I get a hard time. It's not fair to my children. How can a name be offensive?"
The kids are growing up in a home festooned with a swastika in every room. The father wears boots that once belonged to a Nazi soldier, and claims a relative was a member of Hitler's feared Schutzstaffel.
The parents insist they are not racist, although they don't believe in mingling the races.
And Heath Campbell claims he doesn't understand why people are shocked when they hear his son's full name.
Someone give him a history book.
... I'm speechless.
The kid should make it a lifelong goal to be a civil rights activist. It would be even better if he was gay, although thats up to nature. It's just a name anyway, the store is just as much at fault as the bad parent. Now the parent has grounds to sue and make a bigger deal of this.
~Rico
I don't think the store HAS to make the cake, though so I'm not sure if they can sue...
I also heard this on the radio this morning... or yesterday morning, or SOME morning.
I don't remember.
Ha! Well it is just a name, although the poor parents did choose to name their kid this, they should've known the things to come with it. Pretty lame the store wouldn't make the cake though. =/
The kid should make it a lifelong goal to be a civil rights activist. It would be even better if he was gay, although thats up to nature. It's just a name anyway, the store is just as much at fault as the bad parent. Now the parent has grounds to sue and make a bigger deal of this.
~Rico
I doubt it. The store didn't name the children after Nazi leaders, or raise them in a home full of swastikas. It's ironic, if not flat-out hypocritical, for him to claim that what the STORE is doing isn't fair to his children. And he probably could've found any other way to bring public attention to this...
If our laws are similar, then yeah they aren't obliged to make any cake which could land them in trouble. This could be the obvious, like copyright, to the less obvious, like on offensive grounds. And of course, the cake maker themselves might find it distastful, let alone any customers who might see. So they could just deny it on moral grounds.
I hardly see their parents as "poor" if they deliberately named their kids after such dispised people. He can go around bleating that it's just a name all he likes, that he doesn't understand why people are so disgusted with him choosing it. He knew about what Hitler had done and known about his reputation. His family history and way of decorating his house pretty much proves it. He may deny the holocaust ever happened (I have a feeling him choosing these names is all due to that opinion, with trying to prove a point) but Hitler had done a lot more wrong than the holocaust alone. And yet this kid's parents still decided to name his kid that.
I mean, naming your daughter JoyceLynn Ayran Nation? That's just screaming that he wants a reaction.
Hmmm...then again a name is a name. Maybe they just liked that name. *waits awhile*
Ok well still though...i'm assuming he's[italicized] the only Adolf Hitler to have ever walked the Earth? I don't know it just seems kinda...expected. This kid isn't the Nazi Adolf Hitler of the mid 1900s...or is he? *thinks to that episode of Code Monkeys*
The store could just do it and not draw more attention to it. Is wal-mart going to refuse to make Obama's cake? Parents did it for media attention, I'm going to guess the store did too. Only person that suffers? The kid.
~Rico
The store could just do it and not draw more attention to it. Is wal-mart going to refuse to make Obama's cake? Parents did it for media attention, I'm going to guess the store did too. Only person that suffers? The kid.
~Rico
What makes you think that? I'd have thought they simply wouldn't want to write "Adolf Hitler" on a cake; see Trudi's point about the cake makers themselves or customers who might notice. For kids named after Nazi leaders, not getting a cake would probably be like a drop of water in a flood.
There's nothing simple about refusing to write on a cake. There are like 20 people anywhere around the cake that could do it. Maybe they put the cakes that are waiting on display or something. Still. 
Maybe the person who was making the cake was Jewish 😯
I find it kind of sad the parents have no clue what the issue with that name is to expand on what Trudi said. Not that it is obscene, but c'mon. Common sense is not so common apparently, or any of their other kids that.
I have a feeling the dad knows exactly what the matter is; he just wants to look like the victim and bring sympathy to them.
Saying "it's just a name" is the stupidest argument ever. By that notion I should be free to walk into a shopping centre and yell obscenities and not get in trouble for it, cause hey, they're just words.
I'm pretty sure most stores have the right to refuse service to anyone for any non-legally-protected status (such as race, gender, etc).
I'd probably just have made the cake, but I can understand why that store didn't and don't think they should have to.
Damn that's some insight if I've ever seen it
Anyways... they reserve the right to refuse service. Unless those people who hang signs in their store saying that are just lying.
Well, how was the store to know that it wasn't some elaborate practical joke? Are they supposed to make a cake for any joker who wants a birthday cake for a dictator that's been long dead? 😛
I mean seriously, most people don't have that happen to them every day, and in a way, presenting a birth certificate to legitimize the request would make it seem all the more ridiculous.
Those poor kids, though.
those kids are going to have a TERRIBLE time living/growing up should they make it into the outside world...
I have to say, I feel bad for the kid. Those kids' lives are going to be terrible as they get older.
As for the dad? I seriously think he's going the media route for attention to "SHO TEH PLITE OF TEH NAZIS, CUZ WER GUD PEEPL AND IT WUZ THE JEWSIES FALT MAI KID DUSNT GET A CAYK BECUZ THEYR RAYCYST INFEREEOR SCUMZ!!!111" Mainly to show off to his kids. But that's just me.
The store could just do it and not draw more attention to it. Is wal-mart going to refuse to make Obama's cake? Parents did it for media attention, I'm going to guess the store did too. Only person that suffers? The kid.
~Rico
What makes you think that? I'd have thought they simply wouldn't want to write "Adolf Hitler" on a cake; see Trudi's point about the cake makers themselves or customers who might notice. For kids named after Nazi leaders, not getting a cake would probably be like a drop of water in a flood.
What matt said. I wouldn't do it either, and it has nothing to do with publicity. This is 100% the sick parents. BTW, matt, good posts you've been writing lately. 
Obama has a name that is common in that part of the world and was not the last name of a dictator until years after he was born.
Terg: Even if it was a practical joke, as long as their money isn't some kind of prank, I don't really see a problem. 😛 I dunno, if I worked in a place like that and someone asked me to make a cake that I suspected was part of a joke, unless there was some other kind of objection, I'd still make it.
The store could just do it and not draw more attention to it. Is wal-mart going to refuse to make Obama's cake? Parents did it for media attention, I'm going to guess the store did too. Only person that suffers? The kid.
~Rico
What makes you think that? I'd have thought they simply wouldn't want to write "Adolf Hitler" on a cake; see Trudi's point about the cake makers themselves or customers who might notice. For kids named after Nazi leaders, not getting a cake would probably be like a drop of water in a flood.
What matt said. I wouldn't do it either, and it has nothing to do with publicity. This is 100% the sick parents. BTW, matt, good posts you've been writing lately.
o.o So why didn't you remove my name from selfish of the fans like you said you would?
Oh and SX, when you said "as long as their money isn't some kind of prank" I felt reminded of the time I went to a group tutorial for math and the guy running them said "I remember last time you went to one of these you were really lost in the course, I want to let you that's not what these tutorials are for, these are for people who come to them weekly, who've been on top of it to stay on top of it, and if that's not the case I'd suggest you go to a private tutor, because otherwise you'd probably just be throwing $20 away" or something like that... it probably seems off topic, but I felt reminded of that for a good reason; the similarity is in terms of the idea of "questioning your customers"; to look beyond what they're paying you to do it and look into why they want it done. Just like the math tutorial guy might've felt bad about me giving him $20 because I misunderstood the purpose of the tutorials, the people at the bakery might've felt bad about writing a dead dictator's name on a birthday cake; especially if they didn't understand why the guy was asking for it to be done.
