Company Apologizes for ‘Holocaust’ T-Shirt
A Danish fashion company has apologized for a T-shirt featuring a six-pointed star after critics complained it evoked the Star of David that the Nazis forced Jews to wear.
The yellow T-shirt featuring a blue patchwork star on its pocket appeared on the Urban Outfitters retail website last week. It drew a complaint from the Anti-Defamation League, which urged the retailer to remove the shirt from its online catalogue.
Wood Wood, the Danish fashion company that designed the shirt, said the star appeared on a prototype of the T-shirt and was removed after concerns were raised. It said that Urban Outfitters made an error in displaying the early sample T-shirt.
Brian SS Jensen, co-founder of Wood Wood, said in a public statement that “this is no way a reference to Judaism, Nazism or the Holocaust … I am sorry if anyone was offended seeing the shirt, it was of course never our intention to hurt any feelings with this.”
The ADL’s national director, Abraham Foxman, expressed appreciation for the company’s reassurances.
“We are pleased that the company recognized early on the shirt’s potentially offensive imagery and changed the design so the six-pointed star-shaped logo would no longer appear,” he said in a statement.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
