Sportswear firm apologises for Nazi gas gaffe

SPORTSWEAR manufacturer Umbro, which designs kits for the Ireland football team, yesterday apologised for mistakenly calling a pair of trainers the same name as a deadly gas used by the Nazis.

The company agreed to drop the name Zyklon after complaints from at least one Jewish group.

Umbro insisted its decision to call the casual training shoe Zyklon was “purely coincidental.”

The Nazis used Zyklon B, originally an insecticide, in extermination camps during the Second World War, especially the largest and most notorious Auschwitz. As soon as the crystals were exposed to the air they turned into a lethal gas. Any person breathing it in died within minutes.

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.”

Nick Crook, a spokesman for Umbro, told PA News: “We regret that there are people who are offended by the name.”

In a statement the company added: “The naming of the shoe is purely coincidental and was not intended to communicate any connotations.” The Zyklon name has been on the side of boxes for the trainer since its launch in 1999.

It does not appear on the shoe itself.

Dr Stephen Smith, 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 one-and-a-half million children. “Considering the care with which companies normally choose titles for their products, I also find it hard to believe Umbro’s assertion that the naming of the shoe was ‘purely coincidental.’

“Any investigation of the word, on the internet for example, quickly reveals its links to the Holocaust.”

Nick Crook, from Umbro, which also designs kits for the England football squad among others, claimed the name Zyklon was a random choice.

Mr Crook said that Umbro made other trainers starting with the letters Zy.

“I don’t think the person who named them knew what it would mean to some people,” he said.