NEVER AGAIN ASSOCIATION ASKS FOR REMOVAL OF ANTISEMITIC CARICATURE BEING SOLD ONLINE
Never Again Association (NAA), Get The Trolls Out! partner in Poland, found a hateful antisemitic object being sold on the online store Lyson and demanded its immediate removal. The offending item was a wax candle version of the so-called “lucky Jew” figure, an antisemitic caricatures of an orthodox Jewish man holding a coin. After the complaint the site removed the object.
An article by the American publication The Alegmeiner highlighted NAA’s opposition to the sales of antisemitic objects online. The story was also covered by other publications, such as Architectural Digest and the European Jewish Congress as well as several international platforms.
The director of NAA, Rafal Pankowski was quotes in the The Algemeiner as explaining: “The idea of burning a figure of a stereotypical Jew in a country where millions of Holocaust victims were burnt by the German Nazis is particularly disturbing.”
This is part of a wider trend monitored by NAA, where hateful objects are being sold in online stores in Poland. To tackle this problem, NAA partnered with OLX, the largest general classifieds site in Poland, to remove hateful items from the large online store. This was initiated because NAA found antisemitic content on OLX, including Nazi glorification material. Currently, NAA is working with OLX to monitor the platform for hateful objects with the aim of removing them from the site. In a press release outlining the partnership between NAA and OLX, the organisation exaplains: “In the first weeks of the partnership, OLX, acting on the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association’s recommendations, deleted 655 offers of neo-nazi gadgets, such as a lead plaque ‘celebrating Hitler’ and badges with Nazi SS symbols. Some of the deleted offers also featured extremely antisemitic books such as the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ – the most popular antisemitic pamphlet of the 20th century, and ‘The Controversy of Zion’ (Strategy of Zion in Polish) by Douglas Reed, a Holocaust denier. Other deleted items included releases of Polish and foreign music bands that support nazism and racism.”
As outlined in the press release, Phuthi Mahanyele-Dabengwa, Chief Executive Officer of Naspers South Africa (owner of OLX) voiced her support for the partnership between the NAA and OLX: “Both Naspers here at home and OLX in Poland abhor and condemn any form of racism and xenophobia and any attempt to disseminate hate speech of any kind.’ She also added, ‘Our team in Poland has also been engaging with NEVER AGAIN and we welcome their commitment to fight racism and discrimination. NEVER AGAIN has been working with OLX to further identify (limited incidents of) content that break the rules and are listed on the platform.”