From all over the place via Yahoo News:
...and sometimes there are dumbasses with really bad marketing skills...
'Hitler' clothing store stirs anger in India
The owner of an Indian clothing store said Wednesday that he would only change its name from "Hitler" if he was compensated for re-branding costs, amid a growing row over the new shop.
The outlet, which sells Western
men's wear, opened 10 days ago in Ahmedabad city in the western state of
Gujarat with "Hitler" written in big letters over the front and with a
Nazi swastika as the dot on the "i".
Actually, kiddies, the swastika is an ancient Indian [real Aryans] symbol the Nazis stole.
"I will change it (the name) if
people want to compensate me for the money we have spent -- the logo,
the hoarding, the business cards, the brand," Rajesh Shah told AFP.
He put the total costs at about 150,000 rupees ($2,700).
Shah insisted that until the
store opened he did not know who Adolf Hitler was and that Hitler was a
nickname given to the grandfather of his store partner because "he was
very strict".
"I didn't know how much the name
would disturb people," he told AFP by telephone from Ahmedabad. "It was
only when the store opened I learnt Hitler had killed six million
people."
Members of the tiny Jewish
community in Ahmedabad condemned the store's name, while a senior
Israeli diplomat said the embassy would raise the matter "in the
strongest possible way."
"People use such names mostly out of ignorance," Israel's Mumbai Consul General Orna Sagiv told AFP.
Esther David, a prominent Indian
writer in Ahmedabad who is Jewish, said she was "disturbed and
distressed" by the shop, but added that some Indians used the word
"Hitler" casually to describe autocratic people.
David said Jewish residents had sought to change Shah's mind about the store's name and told him about the Holocaust.
The row evoked memories of a
controversy six years ago when a Mumbai restaurant owner called his cafe
"Hitler's Cross" and put a swastika on the hoarding, claiming Hitler
was a "catchy" name.
The restaurant owner eventually
agreed to change the name after protests by the Israeli embassy, Germany
and the US Anti-Defamation League.
Hitler attracts an unusual degree of respect in some parts of India, with his book "Mein Kampf" a popular title in bookshops and on street stalls.
Gujarat schoolbooks issued by the
Hindu nationalist state government were criticised a few years ago for
praising Hitler as someone who gave "dignity and prestige" to the German
government.
India's a really screwed-up place.
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