BERLIN (Reuters) - German hard rockers Rammstein have upset Jewish groups and politicians with a video advertising a new album.

In the short video, available online, band members appear in striped uniforms of concentration camp prisoners with nooses around their necks.

"With this video, the band has crossed a line," Ms Charlotte Knobloch, a Holocaust survivor and former president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told daily Bild.

"The instrumentalisation and trivialisation of the Holocaust, as shown in the images, is irresponsible."

Mr Felix Klein, the government's commissioner for anti-semitism, said if the video was simply to promote sales, "I think it is a tasteless exploitation of artistic freedom".

Rammstein are no strangers to controversy.

Since launching in Berlin in 1995, the rockers have courted controversy with albums, which have touched on such subjects as sadomasochism, homosexuality, incest, abuse, necrophilia, pyromania, cannibalism and sexual violence.

In 2009, the government banned their hit album Liebe ist Fuer Alle Da (Love Is For All) from public display in stores because of its depictions of sado-masochism.