French supermarket apologizes over sale of swastika money belts

A French supermarket chain was selling money belts with the Nazi insignia in Poland.

By Deborah Fineblum, World Israel News

It’s an image that continues to chill the blood even after 75 years: the swastika.

But that didn’t stop French supermarket chain Auchan from selling money belts with the Nazi insignia in Poland.

A supermarket spokesperson says it was an “oversight” and apologized. The chain promised to pull all the belts from the shelves.

One Auchan shopper from Krakow was horrified to discover her new money belt bore a swastika, the Polish newspaper Gazeta Krakowska reported on Monday. “I’m in shock,” she said. “I’ve been walking around with a purse with a Nazi symbol for weeks. I never would have thought a supermarket chain would sell something like this.”

Auchan’s Poland spokeswoman Dorota Patejko told the Agence-France Presse on Tuesday that they’ve traced the swastika-festooned belts to a Polish manufacturer and “our chain wasn’t aware of it.”

“It was an oversight on our part, a situation that we regret,” she said, adding that only one belt had been found and promptly removed from the store.

Though the belts may have been produced in Poland, the country is making efforts to distance itself from its past as a Nazi-occupied country. It has criminalized the production of materials with a swastika and the dissemination of Nazi propaganda. Both are punishable by a fine and/or prison time.

Most recently, Poland announced that notorious Holocaust denier David Irving would be barred from the country and wouldn’t be allowed to tour Poland’s Nazi death camps. It is generally believed he intended to use the trip to advance his Holocaust denial theories.