sold on Amazon.com
on 23 January 2008 despite the press reports
The World Jewish Congress has protested against the sale of T-shirts emblazoned with pro-Nazi sentiments, including ‘I love Heinrich Himmler’, via the US site of the leading internet retailer Amazon.com. WJC secretary-general Michael Schneider said "The sale of these T-shirts is wrong and in bad taste.”
An article published on Tuesday by the Czech weekly ‘Tyden’ called attention to the shirts professing affection for Nazi officials, including SS leader Himmler, the notorious head of the Nazi secret services, Reinhard Heydrich, and the so-called ‘Butcher of Lyon’, former Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie, who personally tortured prisoners and is blamed for the deaths of 4,000 people. Other ‘I love...’ shirts available include the Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi and former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
The T-Shirts are not being sold directly by Amazon itself, but are made available through the Amazon website by a retailer called ‘Direct 4 Sale’, whose US contact number is listed as 1-800-678-2994. An Amazon spokeswoman told the JTA news agency that the T-shirts had been withdrawn from the site when it was informed about them by Tyden. However, whilst the Himmler item is no longer available, T-shirts featuring slogans such as ‘I love Reinhard Heydrich’ and ‘I Love Klaus Barbie’ could still be purchased as of Wednesday morning.
