Teh One Who Knocks
06-08-2017, 12:08 PM
By Kieran Corcoran - Heat Street
http://i.imgur.com/MKITnLuh.jpg
A “holocaust wound” costume item has been pulled from Amazon stores after complaints from the Auschwitz memorial.
The latex item, designed to wrap around the wearer’s face to give the impression of a horrible burn wound, was on sale for £20 ($26) until earlier this week.
It said it was also suitable to portray victims of acid attacks or somebody badly blistered, and boasted of its realistic 3D contouring.
The item was available from a seller called Horror-Shop.com, which is based in Germany but sells across Europe.
After social media users started to complain about the listing, officials at the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum spoke up to condemn the item as “disturbing, disrespectful and painful”.
The official Auschwitz memorial Twitter account posted messages to Amazon and the store directly asking for the listing to be removed.
http://i.imgur.com/3YuspTr.jpg
Amazon subsequently pulled it – a listing link no longer works – while Horror-Shop.com updated the item’s name on their website to “Fire Victim Wound”.
The store defended itself on Twitter, arguing that the Holocaust reference had been unintentional.
It claimed that its English-language listings were not written by staff but generated in bulk by translation software drawing on German product descriptions.
A translation error resulted in an inadvertent Holocaust reference, they said.
http://i.imgur.com/MKITnLuh.jpg
A “holocaust wound” costume item has been pulled from Amazon stores after complaints from the Auschwitz memorial.
The latex item, designed to wrap around the wearer’s face to give the impression of a horrible burn wound, was on sale for £20 ($26) until earlier this week.
It said it was also suitable to portray victims of acid attacks or somebody badly blistered, and boasted of its realistic 3D contouring.
The item was available from a seller called Horror-Shop.com, which is based in Germany but sells across Europe.
After social media users started to complain about the listing, officials at the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum spoke up to condemn the item as “disturbing, disrespectful and painful”.
The official Auschwitz memorial Twitter account posted messages to Amazon and the store directly asking for the listing to be removed.
http://i.imgur.com/3YuspTr.jpg
Amazon subsequently pulled it – a listing link no longer works – while Horror-Shop.com updated the item’s name on their website to “Fire Victim Wound”.
The store defended itself on Twitter, arguing that the Holocaust reference had been unintentional.
It claimed that its English-language listings were not written by staff but generated in bulk by translation software drawing on German product descriptions.
A translation error resulted in an inadvertent Holocaust reference, they said.