Czech publishing company producing objects with portraits of dictators and Nazis because they sell

The online retail outlet for the “Naše vojsko” (“Our Troops”) publishing house in the Czech Republic began selling mugs and t-shirts with Adolf Hitler’s portrait on them in February. At the beginning of April their catalog began to offer t-shirts with images of Reinhard Heydrich, the Reichsprotektor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, who was assassinated in Prague.

Among the other products on sale through the publishing house are objects with motifs of the Nazi Secretary of the Office of the Reichsprotektor, K. H. Frank, the Secretary-General of the Communist Party of the USSR, J. V. Stalin, and Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. News server Romea.cz asked company director Emerich Drtina why his e-shop is offering such products and why the t-shirt of Heydrich is now no longer listed.

“Do you believe a portrait of this or that figure is the same as promotion of that figure? The t-shirts aren’t there anymore because we sold out,” Drtina said.

The owner has made no secret in other Czech media appearances of his opinion that he does not consider these products to be promotions of the people depicted. He says he makes them because they sell and he does not consider anything wrong with making money using the names of such criminals.