The Simon Wiesenthal Center today called on the Japanese discount retail chain, Don Quixote, to remove a “Nazi” uniform adult costume, replete with swastikas, from its approximately 127 stores throughout Japan and Hawaii.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is calling on  Unilever  to drop a Japanese ad campaign for its Ponds Cream that features a woman  dressed in a Nazi SS uniform, replete with the notorious “Totenkopf" (death’s head) symbol. The campaign could be seen on billboards in subways and other prominent locations throughout Japan (visuals at www.wiesenthal.com).   
In a letter to Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever and Michael Treschow, Unilever’s Chairman, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Los Angeles-based Wiesenthal Center, expressed outrage at the use of the SS uniform. “As you know, the SS were Hitler’s murderous shock troops who wrought murder and mayhem across occupied Europe and whose members ran all of the concentration and death camps where millions of innocent Jews and other Europeans were tortured and slaughtered,” he wrote, adding, “It is almost beyond comprehension why anyone would seek the find the esthetic within the history’s worst evil.”
Rabbi Cooper urged the Unilever executives to immediately cancel the campaign and advised that the company’s representatives and advertising executives in Japan receive a basic education about WWII and the Nazi Holocaust. 
Last month, Don Quijote, the Japanese retail chain, removed Nazi uniform costumes  from its shelves following a protest by the Wiesenthal Center. 

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).
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