7-Eleven chain store in Taiwan recalls Hitler key chain, doll

By Danny Bloom

CHIAYI, Taiwan — To make a long story short, after the San Diego Jewish World ran a story about a convenience store chain in Taiwan selling cartoonish images modelled after what appeared to be a Hitler face and armband, although modified as a parody and not designed to promote Nazi thinking, the chain store’s CEO decided to recall the items from all 4,500 stores nationwide. Game over.

However, it took a few days of follow-up news reports from the Agence France-Press news agency, the Deutsche Press-Agentur German News agency, Taiwan’s own Central News Agency, the Chinese-language Liberty Times and CNN for the recall to be finalized. But did anyone in Taiwan learn anything from this Hitler brouhaha? Probably not. Another Hitler cartoon or parody sighting will occur again, within the year, and always with the same naive and innocent intentions.

There is no antisemitism in Taiwan; repeat: there is no antisemitism in Taiwan. But there is a lack of education in schools and in society at large about issues such as the Holocaust or the Nazi period in Europe. And the lack of education is not just about Jewish or Israeli history, it’s also concerns ignorance about events taking place far away in Africa or Europe or South America. Remember, Taiwan is a small island nation just off the coast of China, just south of Japan, and while it boasts one of the most hospitable and friendly people on the face on the Earth, due its own history as an island batted back and forth between neighboring Asian powers — and long ago by the Dutch and the French and the Spanish, not to mention the American presence during the Vietnam War period — Taiwan is a very unique place.

It’s a good place, a good country, with wonderful people. But when it comes to understanding historical events about World War II in Europe or Africa, the nation’s schools do not yet do a very good job about educating students and adults about non-Taiwanese things. But it’s getting better and better and will no doubt continue to improve.

After the Israel Economic and Cultural Office in Taipei (ISECO) told reporters that selling the Hitler doll and key chain items was a bit tacky, the 7-ELEVEN chain store, owned by Japanese businessmen in Tokyo, decided to recall the items. We learned this from reading the DPA news account by David Chang that appeared in the Ha’aretz newspaper in Jerusalem.

The convenience store chain, whose 4,000-plus Taiwanese locations are owned by the President Chain Store Corporation in partnership with the global headquarters in Japan, has suspended sales of the Hitleresque items, including USB drives, key chains and magnets sporting the ”apparent” caricature of the Nazi dictator. One local English-langauge newspaper in Taipei called them “the alleged” Hitler items, as if they weren’t ”really” modelled after Hitler, even
though the designer, Mark Lee, admitted he used Hitler’s face for his parody.

Company officials originally denied that the cartoon was meant to depict Hitler, first calling the black square on the figure’s face a tooth, then a nose, rather than a mustache. But finally on a quiet Wednesday afternoon, three days after the items were spotted in a local store in Taipei, the company acknowledged that the image was offensive and recalled the items.

“Because there are people with doubts, we’ve stopped selling the products for now,” a representative from 7-Eleven told the German Press Agency (dpa), Chang reported.

The ISECO, which is Israel’s de facto embassy to Taiwan, since China does not allow its diplomatic allies to have official ties with the island, says that while it does not think the products were meant to be a show of support for anti-Semitic ideology, the cartoon figure does signify a lack of understanding of the Nazi party’s history.

“We were appalled to see the Hitler lookalike image being used, again, as a marketing aid and sold in Taiwan’s 7-Eleven stores,” ISECO
representative Simona Halperin said in a statement last Tuesday. “I find it tragic that once again people down the chain of marketing and
promotion fail to recognize the meaning of the Dark Age in human history that the Nazi dictator represents.”

Taiwan — and Japan and India and Vietnam and Thailand — has a small, minor history of Nazi imagery popping up in public from time time in
commericals, cartoons, TV comedy shows and even in political campaigns for national elections. But it’s never about promoting Hitler or his
idieology, and it’s always based on lack of education about European history, scholars say. So forgive Taiwan, it knows not what it does.
And when it makes a mistake, as in the recent USB fiasco, it apologizes to both the German and the Israei embassies and says sorry.
The Taiwanese are a good people, and they are open to the world and to world history.

In 1999, a local company used an image of Hitler to advertise space heaters made in Germany. In 2000, a restaurant in Taipei called ”The
Jail” and owned by a popular TV star and comedian named Jacky Wu displayed images of Nazi concentration camps, while a bar in Taipei
operated under the name “Nazi Bar” during the 1990s. Both businesses later removed the references after learning they made huge gaffes.

“The Taiwanese people are not anti-Semitic, just ignorant,” according to Lin Chong-pin, a professor of strategic studies at Tamkang
University in Taiwan. “Some young people today think the Nazi items look spirited but their reading and understanding of European history
is very poor.”

A Catholic priest who has lived in Taiwan for over 30 years and speaks fluent Chinese and works as a translator and college professor in Taipei told this reporter that he always feels saddened when he reads news reports in the Taiwanese newspapers about the inappropriate use of Hitler and Nazi imagery, from motorcycle helmet Nazi decals to cartoons and advertisements using Hitler’s face or voice in humorous ways.

“Of course,I am on your side and the side of decency on all these issues,” he told me. “In my college classes and in my newspaper columns over the years, I’ve addressed this issue of total lack of awareness or concern about Jewish people here in Taiwan and the whole sad story of the Holocaust here and how most Taiwanese just don’t understand it very well, not of our animosity or antisemitism at all, but from lack of education and pure ignorance of European history. The whole damn thing sickens me. And here, it has happened again. At least, the convenience store chain had the decency to cancel the sales of the
key chains and USB doll. It’s a small wake up call and victory, and maybe in a small way, younger generations of Taiwanese people will learn from this episode. But I doubt it.”

“What I see is the inability of many of the Taiwanese to truly think on their own, to push themselves to read and learn, and to analyze.
And there is no real intellectual curiosty here, or very little of that, as a whole, among our college student population, and a drive on
the part of their parents to put the acquisition of material wealth before all other goals in life.I think it’s the same in Japan, too,
where these Hitler gaffes occur from time to time, too.”

Blogger Mark Lee, who designed of the recent Hitler items, admitted that while the figure’s appearance was inspired by Hitler, the cartoon was not meant to endorse any of Hitler’s views. In addition to depicting the dictator’s famous mustache, the caricature also wears a red dollar-sign armband and, in one version, has its arm raised in the fashion of the iconic Nazi salute. Lee told reporters that the doll was meant to represent a dictatorial angry boss, and the whole thing was a parody. He said he loves Israel and he loves the Jewish people, and he meant no harm at all. But now he has learned a lesson, at least
on a personal level, and that’s good.

“I watned to use it to satirize some bosses,” Lee told Agence France-Presse (AFP). “In the eyes of disgruntled employees, many bosses are greedy and dictatorial and like vampires trying to suck money from them. I was actually making fun of Hitler, mocking him. I know who he was, of course, he was a very evil man.”

The story is over. It has legs for a few days, as we say in the newsroom, and then its legs were cut off and now it’s dead as a doornail. Hitler is dead, long may he remain so.
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Bloom is Taiwan bureau chief for San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at dan.bloom@sdjewishworld.com