A customer was shocked to find the bum bag she purchased at an Auchan supermarket had a Nazi swastika printed on it.
The startling discovery was made by a female customer who says she bought the bum bag in an Auchan supermarket located on Bora-Komorowskiego Street in the city of Krakow in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship, southern Poland.
The woman, whose name and age have not been reported, then posted a picture of the bum bag on social media with the Nazi Reichsadler eagle standing atop a swastika visible on the side of the camo-coloured bag.
The customer says she only noticed the disturbing symbolism a few weeks after buying the bum bag when she put it on the table in a restaurant.
She reportedly told local media: “I’m shocked. For a few weeks I walked around with that bag with Nazi symbols.”
Dorota Patejko, a spokeswoman for Auchan, said: “Unfortunately, we were not able to detect this error, hence our oversight, for which we apologise. It was not our intention to introduce these types of products for sale. The company decided to immediately withdraw this product from sale and anyone who bought the bag with this symbol can return it.”
She told local media that it was not an Auchan brand product but that it came from a Polish supplier. The name of the supplier is currently unknown and it is unclear why their design came to feature the Nazi swastika.
Auchan supermarkets are popular with British customers stocking up on wine and groceries in France and elsewhere.
Anna Tatar from Never Again, an anti-racist and anti-fascist association, said: “The sale of products with fascist symbols, especially in a country like Poland, is unacceptable, as is wearing such scandalous things. The swastika is an unambiguous symbol of totalitarianism.”
The product has now been withdrawn from sale.
Auchan is a supermarket chain founded and headquartered in France which is popular with Brits who pop across the channel to cheap cigarettes and alcohol in northern France before returning back to the UK.
The Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) estimates that Nazi genocides killed between 2.7 – 2.9 million Polish Jews and 1.8 – 2.77 million non-Jewish ethnic Poles between 1939 and 1945.
Netizen ‘Gosc’ commented: “Stupid and blind b*tch! She didn’t see what she was buying?!”
While ‘Krakauer’ wrote “are they still available? Surely they’re selling like hotcakes” and ‘hanys’ joked: “They probably made them from old Nazi uniforms.”
The Nazi version of the Reichsadler, which has a long history dating back to the Romans, was created on Adolf Hitler’s orders in 1935.
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Story By: Bartosz Staszewski, Sub-Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News
