Etsy removes ‘Camp Auschwitz’ shirt from its online store
(JTA) — Etsy has removed a T-shirt with the phrase “Camp Auschwitz” on it after images of a rioter involved in the deadly Capitol insurrection with the same words on his sweatshirt circulated in recent days.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum tweeted at the e-commerce company, which sells customized craft items, saying that the shirt it found on the site was “painful to Survivors[sic] and disrespectful to the memory of all victims of Auschwitz.”
.@Etsy Please remove this. It is painful to Survivors and disrespectful to the memory of all victims of Auschwitz. pic.twitter.com/TIWWK2DEVG
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) January 11, 2021
The man in the sweatshirt at the mob riot has been identified as Robert Keith Packer. His sweatshirt also contained a translation of the infamous phrase on the Auschwitz gate, “Arbeit macht frei” (“Work brings freedom”), and said “Staff” on the back.
“Etsy’s long-standing policies prohibit items that promote hate or violence, and we are vigilantly monitoring the marketplace for any such listings that may have been inspired by recent unrest,” an Etsy spokesperson told Reuters on Monday.
Etsy was not the only company to remove shirts with the phrase from its site — Teespring and TeeChip also took them down, according to Newsweek. Teespring added that it will make a donation to the Auschwitz museum.
Over a million Jews and others were killed at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO