Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Auschwitz Mini Skirts, Throw Pillows, To Be Removed From Online Store

Everything is so commercial these days — even images of a Nazi death camp.

The Auschwitz Memorial and Museum rebuked the online marketplace Redbubble on Tuesday, stating that using images of the concentration camp on vanity items isn’t appropriate.

The museum’s account included screenshots of products being sold on the site by three different users — an “Auschwitz II Birkenau” throw pillow, an Auschwitz tote bag, and a “chimney” mini skirt. Redbubble is an online venue for independent “stores” to sell housewares personalized with artwork and digital prints.

The museum tweeted directly at Redbubble, writing “Do you really think that selling such products as pillows, mini skirts or tote bags with the images of Auschwitz – a place of enormous human tragedy where over 1.1 million people were murdered – is acceptable? This is rather disturbing and disgraceful.”

“We are taking immediate action to remove these and similar works available on these product types,” the company wrote. “Redbubble is the host of an online marketplace where independent users take responsibility for the images they upload.”

The company added that they “are grateful to be made aware of these concerns.”

The social media exchange comes just short of a week after Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day. In March 2019, the Auschwitz Museum urged tourists to stop taking photos on the train tracks leading to the front of the camp in respect to those who were killed in the Holocaust.

Adrianna Chaviva Freedman is the Social Media Intern for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @ac_freedman

A message from our CEO & publisher 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 during this critical time.

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

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.