JAKARTA, INDONESIA—Really, there is no reason you should be offended by the SoldatenKaffee, its owner insists.

True, this café in Bandung, Indonesia’s third-largest city, features a portrait of Adolf Hitler over its fireplace. There are also giant Third Reich iron eagles bearing swastikas on the wall, next to Nazi posters. And yes, some of its customers are wearing military uniforms and Nazi armbands.

But this is definitely not a Nazi-themed place. The owner wants to make this very clear, once for all.

“From the beginning I have said that the SoldatenKaffee is not a Nazi café. This café’s theme is World War II,” Henry Mulyana declared during a press conference he organized for its recent reopening.

Of course, you could be forgiven for any confusion. The establishment is named after a German military café in the Second World War’s occupied Paris. Giant Nazi flags and Waffen SS propaganda grace its red walls. Customers can order “Nazi goreng” (a revisited version of the traditional Indonesian fried rice dish nasi goreng) served on swastika-motif china, by a waiter wearing an SS uniform.

The SoldatenKaffee (Soldier’s café), which first opened in 2011, attracted the attention of the English-language Jakarta Globe, and subsequently the international media. The story sparked global outrage. The café’s owner received death threats and was summoned by local authorities to explain his motives.

At the time, he argued he didn’t idolize Hitler and had just chosen a theme he thought would attract customers.

Still, he also claimed there was no proof the Nazis were responsible for the Holocaust. “Controversy will always exist, depending on from what side we’re looking from. The way I see it, the Nazis didn’t commit slaughter,” he told the Jakarta Globe.

He then decided to temporarily shut the place but promised it would reopen with a more general Second World War theme.

Sure, it now also features pictures of Stalin and Churchill, mannequins wearing different military uniforms, and a variety of British, French, American, Japanese and Dutch military memorabilia.

“We have a lot of customers from Europe and they don’t have a problem with the World War II theme, because it is seen here from a historical perspective,” the owner also said at the café’s reopening.

But the Hitler pictures, the Hitler quotes on the wall and swastikas suggest otherwise. As does the fact that the café’s Facebook page is full of Nazi propaganda.

Knowledge of the Holocaust and the Nazi era is not widespread in Indonesia.

Winda, who works in Jakarta but studied in Bandung, says she doesn’t remember studying the topic at school. “Perhaps the Holocaust was mentioned, but very briefly. We only heard about Adolf Hitler,” she says. “I think we were taught to dislike the Jews more than the Nazis.”

A YouTube video, spotted by Germany’s Der Spiegel and released recently, follows the same line.

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It features Indonesian rock star Ahmad Dhani dressed in what seems to be a Himmler uniform and reinterpreting “We will rock you” in support of Indonesia’s presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto. Prabowo thanked the Indonesian Idol judge on social media, and republished the video. Ahmad Dhani, in his uniform, later appeared as the cover photo of the “non-Nazi” SoldatenKaffee Facebook page.

Marie Dhumieres is a reporter for GlobalPost.

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