Renewed outrage at existence of "Führerwein."
By
Rebecca Gibb | Posted Monday, 12-Aug-2013
A leading Jewish human rights organization has called for wine distributors worldwide to boycott an Italian company selling a line of Nazi- and fascist-themed wines. The bottles include labels bearing Adolf Hitler's picture and slogans such as "Mein Führer" and "Sieg Heil."
"Enough is enough," said Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, which has more than 400,000 member families in the United States.
"We first protested the marketing of ‘Führerwein’ by
Vini Lunardelli, an Italian-based company in 1995. Now, an expanded line of wines that demean, diminish and mock Hitler's victims are promoted on a slick website," they added.
Vini Lunardelli has produced a Hitler range of wines as part of its "historical" line for 18 years. It has previously been threatened with legal action under a law that forbids the glorification of fascism.
On its website, Lunardelli says that its historical range accounts for half of the winery’s production and “has become a cult object among collectors," The company adds that the wines generate “a lot of attention from the media all over the world both for the originality of the idea and for the quality of the wines.”