Amazon has removed Christmas decorations featuring photographs of Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz from its website following complaints online.
Christmas tree baubles featuring photos of the site where about 1.1 million people, overwhelmingly Jewish, were killed during the Second World War were listed for sale on the tech giant's site.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Poland shared images of the offensive products on its Twitter account, calling them “rather disturbing and disrespectful” and calling on the shopping giant to remove them.
Selling "Christmas ornaments" with images of Auschwitz does not seem appropriate. Auschwitz on a bottle opener is rather disturbing and disrespectful. We ask @amazon to remove the items of those suppliers. https://t.co/0uG2JG558e pic.twitter.com/ucZoTWPk1W
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) December 1, 2019
The images shared by the Memorial and Museum sparked outrage online, with Twitter users tagging Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in demands for removal.
On removal of the items, an Amazon spokeswoman said sellers on the site "must follow our selling guidelines and those who do not will be subject to action, including potential removal of their account.”
Amazon's guidelines for sellers prohibit the sale of items "related to human tragedies".
The museum later tweeted saying it had discovered other troubling items.
Those include a "disturbing" mouse pad and a ceramic Christmas ornament with a freight car used for deporting Jews for extermination.
Nazi Germany set up the death camp after occupying Poland during the Second World War.
The Holocaust site has become a symbol of Nazi Germany's genocide of six million European Jews, with 1 million killed at the camp between 1940 to 1945.
More than 100,000 non-Jews also died there, according to the museum. An estimated 232,000 of the victims were children.
The incident isn't the first involving photographs of Auschwitz listed for sale. In May, Australian e-commerce site Redbubble was criticised for allowing the sale of a tote bag with a German-language warning sign at Auschwitz and a skirt and pillow with similar images.
At the time, Redbubble CEO Barry Newstead apologised for any offence caused and removed the products. “The Holocaust is an historical crime and tragedy that is personal to me," he said. “Redbubble is a learning organisation, we learn from our mistakes.”
