Drug store chain Walgreens has pulled rolls of Hanukkah wrapping paper from its stores nationwide after a shopper complained that she found a swastika pattern in the design.
Cheryl Shapiro was shopping at her local Walgreens in Los Angeles over the weekend when she said she noticed some Hanukkah wrapping paper that contained a geometric border design that had a swastika shape inside it.
“I told them I wanted this taken off the shelves immediately — not just your store, but national,” the 63-year-old grandmother told NBC Los Angeles. “I was really putting my foot down because I was appalled by this.”
The manager gladly agreed to remove the paper with the swastika design from the Los Angeles store and the company moved swiftly to prevent a public relations disaster across the country.
A spokesman for Walgreens, Phil Caruso, told The Huffington Post that the offensive paper has not only been removed from stores in Los Angeles, but nationwide as well.
“We have implemented a process to prevent the product from being sold at the register as we remove the item from our stores,” he said.
The swastika appears as a sacred or decorative element in various world cultures, but the Nazis use of it during the Holocaust makes it particularly offensive to Jews.
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