Estonian dieters have been advised about a new weight loss method via a "humorous"advert that featured Jewish concentration camp prisoners.

In what the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a leading human rights organisation, described as "sick", the advert included a photograph of emaciated prisoners and the tagline: "One, two, three: Dr Mengele's diet pills work miracles on you. There were no fatties in Buchenwald."

The offending advert was published in the comedy pages of the weekly news magazine Eesti Ekspress.

Dr Efraim Zuroff, a prominent Nazi hunter and Holocaust expert, said it was "incomprehensible" that the publication would publish "such a perverted attempt at humour at the expense of the Nazis' millions of victims".

He added: "What can one expect in a country which glorifies its SS veterans and failed to prosecute a single one of its many Nazi collaborators?"

The deputy editor of the publication defended its inclusion on the basis that it was not serious, but was rather an attempt to mock an Estonian gas company which recently had to retract and advert that used an image of Auschwitz.

"It was not targeted against Jewish people," insisted Sulev Vedler.