Great leap forward preempted by hungry party officials

The J-blogosphere is currently giving some attention to a Hamas kiddie television character, a giant Jew-eating bunny. Some of you may recall, however, that someone bred real giant bunnies in Germany and that he was sending some of them to North Korea for breeding purposes with the idea of helping the great powerful prosperous socialist nation with its starvation problem. It turns out that none of that Rabbit flesh is ever going to get to the starving Korean in the street because the supposed breed-stock rabbits were all eaten by party officials! As before, Spiegel Online has the story:

A German pensioner who made headlines last year (more...) for breeding giant rabbits -- and selling a batch to North Korea with the idea of easing hunger -- is the subject of a short documentary by an American director in the the 2008 Berlin Film Festival. Director Julius Onah made the five-minute film . . . after reading about Karl Szmolinsky on SPIEGEL ONLINE. And in doing so, he learned that the rabbits may have been eaten by North Korean functionaries instead of the starving people for whom they were intended.

Szmolinsky is a 68-year-old German living in Eberswalde, near Berlin, who won a prize for breeding a 10.5-kilogram (23.1 pound) rabbit named Robert in 2006. Robert was the size of a small dog. When North Korean leaders saw photos of him they contacted Szmolinsky through a breeding federation, hoping to purchase a line of "German Giant Grays" to alleviate hunger in their hermetic Communist state. [...]

"In April of '07 Szmolinsky was supposed to go to North Korea himself and oversee the breeding of the rabbits," Onah told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "But some time between January and April he found out that the rabbits he sent got eaten (by senior officials). All 12 of them. So he refused to cooperate (more...) with the North Koreans." [...]

We also learn that Szmolinsky got "harassing phone calls" from animal rights advocates, who appear to have had a point.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Tags: Germany, giant rabbits, North Korea, Hamas