Clothing and art website RedBubble is slammed for selling $69 T-shirts, $39 mini-skirts, pillows and tote bags with AUSCHWITZ images printed on them
San Francisco-based clothing and art company has been slammed for selling mini-skirts and pillows with the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz printed on them.
Redbubble has been criticized for offering $69 T-shirts with the haunting black and white images of the site where 1.1 million Jews were exterminated between 1942 and 1945, during the Nazi's 'Final Solution'.
Other deeply offensive and macabre products, such as skirts depicting the chimneys near where the bodies of Nazi victims were incinerated, can be purchased for $39.
'Disturbing and disrespectful': A San Francisco-based clothing and art company has been slammed for selling mini-skirts with prints of Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz
Redbubble has been criticized for offering $69 T-shirts with haunting black and white images of the site where 1.1 million Jews were exterminated between 1942 and 1945
Tote bags and pillows showing the tracks leading up to the Auschwitz sub-camp Birkenau are on offer for $10 and $30, respectively.
A spokesperson for the Auschwitz museum in Poland condemned the products as 'disturbing and disrespectful.'
Tweeting the site directly, they said: 'Do you really think that selling such products as pillows, mini skirts or tote bags with the images of Auschwitz - a place of enormous human tragedy where over 1.1 million people were murdered - is acceptable? This is rather disturbing and disrespectful.'
A spokesperson for the Auschwitz museum in Poland condemned the products as 'disturbing and disrespectful'. Tweeting the site directly, they said: 'Do you really think that selling such products as pillows, mini skirts or tote bags with the images of Auschwitz - a place of enormous human tragedy where over 1,1 million people were murdered - is acceptable?'
Digital colorist Marina Amaral also attacked the products, labeling them 'disgusting'.
Another Twitter user labelled the items 'nauseating,' while Terry Banet said: 'I can’t really wrap my head around why someone would do this.'
Auschwitz was a complex of more than 40 camps located across several kilometers, with the original located in the annexed town of Oświęcim in Poland, which was known as Auschwitz while under German occupation.
The Nazis converted what had been a local army barracks into an enormous killing machine where an estimated 1.1million people died. It is estimated that 90 percent of those who died at Auschwitz were Jews.
The 'Final Solution' was officially launched in March 1942 with the opening of Belzec, although the killing campaign was already underway by December 1941 in the Łódź Ghetto in the Warthegau district, using mobile gas trucks.
Auschwitz was liberated by invading Soviet forces on January 27, 1945 - the date now marked as Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK.
The governments of Poland and Germany have both contributed to preserving the camp as a memorial, which was declared a World Heritage Site in 1979.
Tote bags and pillows showing the tracks leading up to the Auschwitz II - Birkenau site are on offer for $10 and $45 respectively.
Auschwitz was a complex of more than 40 camps located across several kilometers, with the original located in the town of Oświęcim in Poland, which was known as Auschwitz while under German occupation
RedBubble said: 'We appreciate that this has been brought to our attention. The nature of this content is not acceptable and is not in line with our Community Guidelines. We are taking immediate action to remove these and similar works available on these product types'
Many of the products listed on the website were still visible today, although were not available for purchase.
The company told DailyMail in a statement: 'Redbubble is the host of an online marketplace where independent users take responsibility for the images they upload.
'Redbubble takes a strong stance against racism and violence, including the atrocities committed in Nazi concentration camps. We have onsite reporting functions in place should community members discover works that breach these guidelines that have not yet been removed by our team.
'We are grateful when any such material on the site is brought to our attention.
'We have taken immediate action to remove these works identified by The Auschwitz Memorial and are continuously working to ensure we keep offending content of this nature off of Redbubble.'