Amazon Under Fire Again After Selling Auschwitz Concentration Camp Christmas Ornaments
Amazon removed some Christmas items depicting the Auschwitz concentration camp after howls of outrage on social media forced the retail giant to act.
Nearly 1 million Jews were killed at the World War II death camp operated by the Nazis in occupied Poland.
Amazon was put on notice by the Auschwitz Memorial, which preserves the site of the camp.
“Selling ‘Christmas ornaments’ with images of Auschwitz does not seem appropriate. Auschwitz on a bottle opener is rather disturbing and disrespectful. We ask @amazon to remove the items of those suppliers,” it tweeted.
Selling “Christmas ornaments” with images of Auschwitz does not seem appropriate. Auschwitz on a bottle opener is rather disturbing and disrespectful. We ask @amazon to remove the items of those suppliers. https://t.co/0uG2JG558e pic.twitter.com/ucZoTWPk1W
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) December 1, 2019
Then the memorial found there were more products than it first suspected.
“Sadly, it is not over yet @amazon. The ‘Massacre Auschwitcz (!) Birkenau Jewish Death’ mousepad is another disturbing online product. We are not sure if @yadvashem would like the ‘Christmas ornament’ with a freight car used for deporting Jews for extermination either,” it said, referring to the Jerusalem-based World Holocaust Remembrance Center.
Sadly, it is not over yet @amazon. The “Massacre Auschwitcz (!) Birkenau Jewish Death” mousepad is another disturbing online product. We are not sure if @yadvashem would like the “Christmas ornament” with a freight car used for deporting Jews for extermination either. https://t.co/qDEEzqzwSU pic.twitter.com/wXExhFZPmV
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) December 1, 2019
Many on Twitter were also outraged.
It’s a sad , sick world when nothing is sacred and everything is up for sale. We learnt this weekend what extremism tragically cost two young innocents in London. Why would Amazon ever consider peddling this filth in the first place? #Auschwitz https://t.co/8zVCRf3ZJ4
— Angela Epstein (@adepstein1) December 2, 2019
As the Grandson of Holocaust survivors who had to endure the traumas of Auschwitz, I find this disgusting, repulsive, and unbecoming of a company like @amazon or any single American company. I don’t understand how something like this gets made in this day and age, let alone sold. https://t.co/JvhVEFXLK5
— Josh Gad (@joshgad) December 2, 2019
Amazon told NBC News in a statement Monday morning that the products in question have been removed, according to NBC.
“All sellers must follow our selling guidelines and those who do not will be subject to action, including potential removal of their account,” an Amazon representative said in a statement.
However, when The Washington Post went shopping for other tasteless items related to the Holocaust, it found that not everything had been removed.
It found what it said was a “Weekino Germany Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe” bottle opener.
The Post also said it found a “Germany Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe” Valentine’s Day key chain bearing an image of Berlin’s Holocaust memorial and the message, “I love you.”
The Auschwitz Memorial also posted an item that had previously escaped its notice. After the post, the item was no longer available.
The story continuous. We start getting an impression that people took upon themselves the job that someone at @amazon should be doing: verifying the products that are uploaded there. Here is an “Arbeit macht frei” bath-beach-pool-gym towel. https://t.co/VD4uXikjpl https://t.co/DF4rChxIiV pic.twitter.com/NS9kROWIFp
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) December 2, 2019
In its reporting, the website Wired sought to explain how such tasteless products exist in the first place.
“[T]he ornaments likely don’t exist until someone buys one. The sellers behind them have created an enormous ecommerce net of sorts, designed to catch that one person from Cumberland, Kentucky, looking for a hometown-themed Christmas ornament when they log onto Amazon,” it wrote.
If a buyer wants a mug with that image, the seller “can print the image onto the ceramic ornament and send it to the lucky buyer. In the meantime, they’re not sitting on expensive inventory, and it doesn’t cost them anything to continue listing ornaments featuring other places on Amazon.”
Wired reported that many products such as the Auschwitz ones use images downloaded from sites that provide them free of charge.
Wired said sellers who use this technology “create a mountain of ghost products Amazon and other ecommerce companies need to competently vet, or else they risk facing a scandal like the one that unfolded this week.”
“At the scale these companies operate, there’s no easy solution,” it said. “Something like Auschwitz Christmas ornaments might just be the cost of doing business the Amazon way.”
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