The naming of the shoe is purely coincidental. -- Company spokesman

Thursday 29 August 2002

Umbro drops its Zyklon shoe after Jewish protests

By Jonathan Petre
Religion Correspondent

David Irving recalls: SOMEBODY put their foot in it. In fact, Zyklon brand pest-control tablets were still being marketed in the UK after the war (the distributors' telegraphic address was "Zyklon, London"). The files are in the Public Record Office. More recently, outraged Jewish leaders managed to get a "Zyklon" helter-skelter at a fairground renamed in Brighton, England.

UMBRO, the sportswear manufacturer, apologised yesterday for calling one of its running shoes Zyklon, the same name as the lethal gas used by the Nazis during the Holocaust.

The company agreed to drop the name after complaints from Jewish groups including the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which condemned Umbro for "appalling insensitivity".

A spokesman for Umbro said: "We regret that there are people who are offended by the name. The naming of the shoe is purely coincidental and was not intended to communicate any connotations."

The Nazis used Zyklon B, originally an insecticide, in extermination camps during the Second World War.

As soon as the crystals were exposed to the air they turned into a lethal gas. Any person breathing it died within minutes.

The name Zyklon does not appear on the shoe itself but has been on the sides of boxes for the trainer since its launch in 1999 and is used on displays in shops.

The company said yesterday that it had already changed the shoe's name in Britain and was planning to do the same for the rest of the world as soon as possible. There was no explanation, however, about why it had chosen the name in the first place.

Dr Shimon Samuels, of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, the international Jewish human rights organisation, said in a letter to Umbro that its "outrageous misuse of the Holocaust is an insult to its victims and survivors".

Dr Stephen Smith, the co-founder of the Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre in Nottinghamshire, said: "Commercial appropriation of words carrying connotations of mass murder is utterly unacceptable.

"Umbro's application of the word Zyklon to a child's trainer is rightly described by Dr Samuels as an insult to the victims and survivors of the Nazi death camps where Zyklon B was used to destroy so many lives - including those of 1.5 million children.

"Any investigation of the word, on the Internet for example, quickly reveals its links to the Holocaust."

Fiona Macaulay, a spokeswoman for the Board of Deputies of British Jews, an umbrella body for more than 270,000 Jews in this country, said: "The original marketing decision to name the shoe is appallingly insensitive to the six million Jewish and five million non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust.

"I welcome the news that Umbro has changed the name of the shoe in Britain and would urge them to do the same worldwide as a matter of urgency."

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