‘Never Forget’? EasyJet Comes Under Fire for Twitter Ad With Holocaust References

Bargain airline EasyJet has apologized after a Twitter post made over the weekend that centered around a reference to the Nazi-perpetrated Holocaust.

On Thursday, EasyJet posted an ad on its official Twitter account featuring a person rolling back his right sleeve to reveal a tattoo across his inner forearm of a string of letters and numbers.

“You never forget your first flight,” the caption read, hinting that the tattoo is likely of a customer’s ticket number.

No easyJet. Please no. pic.twitter.com/TyNGJjvJOp

— Jon Siva ✈️ יונתן סיווה (@jonsiva_) April 7, 2022

However, the forearm tattoo sparked immediate comparisons to the identification tattoos given by the Nazis to many inmates in the concentration camp system as part of the Holocaust of the 1930s and 1940s. Although roughly 11.5 million people were exterminated in the Holocaust, including 6 million Jews, or two-thirds of European Jewry, some 300,000 survived internment in the concentration camps, not all of whom were given ID tattoos.

In addition, the EasyJet ad’s tagline included a reference to the Holocaust remembrance slogan “never forget.”

Needless to say, social media users found the ad distasteful and immediately reacted with shock, fury and disgust. The post was quickly deleted, and on Friday, the low-cost British airline issued a formal apology for the incident.

“While this is a genuine picture of a customer’s tattoo celebrating their first flight with us, we understand the concerns raised and as a result decided to remove the post,” an EasyJet spokesperson told the Times of Israel. “We are sorry for any offense unintentionally caused by the post.”

This isn’t the first time EasyJet has been forced to backtrack after using Holocaust imagery in an ad, either: in 2009, the airline apologized after an in-flight magazine it had printed and put on its aircraft was found to have a series of fashion photos taken of models posing at different Holocaust memorials across Europe. The locations included the Jewish Museum Berlin and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.