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The Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Centre has called for a global boycott of an Italian company that sells wines featuring images of Adolf Hitler and Nazi slogans on its labels.

“The Wiesenthal Centre denounces the marketing of these products and urges wine distributors in Italy and around the world to send the only message the owner of this firm might understand that they choose not to do any business with someone using the Nazi mass murderer as a blatant marketing tool,” said Rabbis Marvin Hier, dean and founder, and Abraham Cooper, associate dean, in a statement.

The statement from the Los Angeles-based human rights group was released after a Norwegian couple visiting the coastal town of Rimini this week said they were shocked to discover controversial wines produced by Vina Lunardelli in the country’s north-east.

Last year an American couple complained when they found that a supermarket near their hotel in the northern city of Garda was stocking wine bottles with Hitler in various poses. They are still widely available despite the integration minister at the time promising an investigation. The labels are part of a series including Mussolini, Churchill and Stalin.

Alessandro Lunardelli, who heads the company, defended the labels, saying they were a “joke” and not meant to offend anyone. The labels had also become a cult among collectors and had been a great commercial success, he said.

http://www.theprovince.com/news/oddities/Hitler+wine+prompts+calls+global+Jewish+human+rights+group/8778986/story.html