KFC Germany apologizes for ‘treat yourself’ chicken promotion tied to Kristallnacht
“Welcome to KFC” is written above a drive-in menu at the fast food chain Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) in Duesseldorf, Nov. 18, 2020. (Rolf Vennenbernd/picture alliance via Getty Images)
(JTA) — The German branch of international fast-food chain KFC apologized to customers Wednesday for sending out a promotional message tied to the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the evening of Nazi-led antisemitic riots that precipitated the mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust.
“It’s memorial day for Kristallnacht! Treat yourself with more tender cheese on your crispy chicken,” KFC Germany said in an initial push notification message to customers, in German, advertising its “KFCheese.”
A short time after, the chain sent a follow-up in all-caps: “SORRY WE MADE A MISTAKE.” The company blamed the message on “a bug in our system.”
Germany takes the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the “night of broken glass,” seriously, even though Germans do not call the event by that name. Memorial events and discussions take place nationwide each year on Nov. 9-10 to reflect on Nazi Germany’s persecution of Jews.
Reaction to KFC’s “mistake” came swiftly. Daniel Sugarman, director of public affairs for the Board of Deputies of British Jews, tweeted that the promotion was “absolutely hideous.” Arsen Ostrovsky, head of the pro-Israel legal group International Legal Forum, said he was “utterly speechless and repulsed.”
Meanwhile, another German institution came under fire for a Kristallnacht controversy this year. Goethe-Institut Israel, the Israeli location of the German language and cultural center, rescheduled a planned panel discussion on “the Holocaust, Nakba and German Remembrance Culture” that had been set to take place on the anniversary of the violence. The “Nakba” is the common Palestinian term for the mass displacement and deaths that accompanied the State of Israel’s 1948 War of Independence.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry had criticized the Goethe-Institut for linking the Holocaust to the founding of the State of Israel on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, calling it “the blatant cheapening of Holocaust and the cynical and manipulative attempt to create a linkage whose entire purpose is to defame Israel.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
